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A planned ban in the works throughout President Joe Biden’s administration could come within his final days, serving smokers up to the cartels.

Hardly any facet of American lives has remained untouched by regulatory overreach in the four years that Biden has occupied the White House. Now, after previously delaying a specific ban over concerns of backlash impacting the election, the Food and Drug Administration is poised to finalize a rule reducing legal nicotine levels, setting the stage for illicit sales and increased risk to consumers.

“Biden’s ban is a gift with a bow and balloons to organized crime cartels with it, whether it’s cartels, Chinese organized crime, or Russian mafia. It’s going to keep America smoking, and it’s going to make the streets more violent,” argued Rich Marianos to Fox News Digital.

The chair of the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network and former assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives specifically expressed his concern that Mexican cartels would begin trafficking tobacco products in a fashion similar to drug and human trafficking while also predicting a counterproductive outcome.

“You’re going to create more smoking. And I thought that’s what we’re trying to get away from, right? Smoking is bad. I thought we were trying to do everything possible to get away from that and get the country safer. Well, if you take down the nicotine levels, people are going to smoke more. That is proven,” said Marianos. “All you have to do is just drive here in DC and see, you know workers on their smoke break.”

“This decision is being thrown down the public’s throat without one ounce of thought and preparation. Nobody sat down with law enforcement, nobody sat down with any doctors, no one sat down with any regulators to find out, ‘Hey, look, what are the unintended ramifications of such a poor choice,’ and that’s what I’m going to call it, a poor choice,” he added.

In late 2023, as Biden took heat over a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes, viewed by many as disproportionately impacting black communities, it was reported that Massachusetts’ own ban on the tobacco product had preempted increased contraband seizures.

“A recent report by the Massachusetts Illegal Tobacco Task Force found that contraband cigarette seizures skyrocketed from just 5,377 in 2021 to 18,483 in 2022,” The New England Convenience Store & Energy Marketers Association posted on their website.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the FDA told Fox News Digital, “The proposed rule, ‘Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products,’ is displaying in the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) ROCIS system as having completed regulatory review on January 3.”

“As the FDA has previously said, a proposed product standard to establish a maximum nicotine level to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes and certain other combusted tobacco products, when finalized, is estimated to be among the most impactful population-level actions in the history of the U.S. tobacco product regulation,” continued the spokesman. “At this time, the FDA cannot provide any further comment until it is published.”

The bureaucratic power of the FDA over tobacco products stretches back to then-President Barack Obama’s signing of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act in 2009, but the latest attempts to regulate nicotine levels have been faced with bipartisan opposition.

In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in 2023, Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, and Marco Rubio of Florida were joined by Democratic Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Mark Warner of Virginia that read in part, “In 2015, the State Department cited activity by terrorist groups and criminal networks who have used tobacco trafficking operations to finance other crimes, including ‘money laundering, bulk cash smuggling, and the trafficking in humans, weapons, drugs, antiquities, diamonds, and counterfeit goods.’”

“Recently, public reporting has also noted these financial linkages between Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) involved in narcotics and fentanyl trafficking, and these tobacco smuggling activities. Mexican TCOs pose a grave threat to American nation security and public health,” they added amid record drug overdose deaths while calling on the State Department to address the threats.

Kevin Haggerty
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