The Food and Drug Administration’s recently announced proposal to ban menthol cigarettes is ill advised on multiple fronts. Not only does this proposal make no economic sense but it also fails to recognize a simple fact: People in a free society should be free to choose their poison.
The FDA has recently stated that it intends to use congressionally approved powers to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products in an attempt to reduce youth initiation into tobacco, thus curbing tobacco-related illness.
The plan rests on the assumption that youths will be deterred by sales bans. But they won’t.
Government bans rarely lead to a change in attitude among youths. Take marijuana, for example: Pot use in teens has historically sat around the one-third mark, with the sale of and possession of marijuana only recently seeing legal status in some states. E-cigarettes, too, which have faced heavy scrutiny by the FDA since 2020, are overwhelmingly used by youths in comparison to other age groups.
Damon Miles – InsideSources – 2022-06-06.
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