(The Center Square) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s plan to ban the sale of flavored cigars would result in 16,000 lost jobs in the industry while providing “little or no” health benefits, the Cigar Association of America argues.
Association officials met this week with the White House Office of Management and Budget seeking to overturn the proposed ban on flavored cigars.
“We presented evidence to OMB that FDA’s proposed flavored cigar ban dramatically fails to meet the criteria necessary for such a ban under the Tobacco Control Act, offering little or no public health benefit while having a devastating economic impact on the industry,” CAA president David Ozgo said in a news release.
In addition to costing 16,000 jobs, such a ban would cost the industry more than $4 billion in sales, Ozgo said.
While the FDA for years has been considering a ban on flavored tobacco products such as menthol cigarettes and cigars, last month it sent final rules to the OMB and asked for an expedited approval. The FDA maintains that banning flavored tobacco products has “the potential to significantly reduce disease and death” and reduce “youth experimentation and addiction.”
But the Cigar Association of America and other tobacco industry groups say the FDA data is flawed.
“FDA claims the product standard will reduce youth usage of cigars and that prohibiting flavored cigars will address health disparities in minority adult subpopulationsm” Ozgo said. “CAA showed OMB government data demonstrating that neither of these claims is true.”
Ozgo points to he 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey and other studies show youth cigar use at under 2% and youth flavored cigar use at less than 1%.
“FDA’s claims aside, there is simply not a pattern of use of these products that raises a concern of public health that can justify eliminating an entire category of products, while depriving adult consumers of the right to choose these products” he said.
In August, a federal judge in Washington D.C. blocked the FDA’s attempt to regulate premium cigars.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta in Washington D.C. ruled that the FDA ignored scientific evidence when it included premium cigars in its Proposed Rule Deeming Tobacco Products to Be Subject to the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FDCA).