CBS News – The Food and Drug Administration is moving to cut out addictive nicotine from cigarettes, according to a long-awaited proposed regulation released Wednesday.
The rule aims to force the nearly 12% of Americans still using combustible tobacco products to switch to less dangerous alternatives, like vaping electronic cigarettes or using nicotine lozenges, or quit altogether while ending rates of youth starting to smoke traditional cigarettes.
[NOTE: electronic cigarettes are not a “less dangerous alternative” to cigarettes, they simply destroy your health and your life in different ways. – HEADLINE HEALTH.]
“The proposed product standard would limit the addictiveness of the most toxic and widely used tobacco products, which would have significant public health benefits for all age groups,” the agency wrote in the proposed rule.
Though vaping rates have climbed in recent years, fewer adults vape than smoke traditional cigarettes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 6% of adults use e-cigarettes.
It will now be up to the returning Trump administration to decide if and how to finalize this measure, which was first floated during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. At the time, the head of the FDA called it “one of the most important actions I could take to advance public health.”
“If there is a goal to Make America Healthy Again, I can’t imagine anything more important to get done than this,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf told reporters on Wednesday.
A related effort to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes stalled out last year under the Biden administration, amid political blowback over the measure.
The FDA says the proposed rule will apply to traditional cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco, cigars and pipe tobacco. Cigarette manufacturers will have two years to come into compliance with the rule, after it is finalized.
Agency officials stressed that they were not seeking to ban cigarettes or other tobacco products outright …
