In the final days of the Obama administration, the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) will implement a regulatory change that would effectively outlaw cigarettes currently available on the market in favor of products with lower nicotine levels, according to an expert. This could help cartels operating on the black market grow, according to an expert. ” Biden’s restrictions is a product with a spear and kites to organized crime organizations with it, whether it’s organizations, Chinese organized offense, or Russian mob. It’s going to stay America cigarettes, and it’s going to make the streets more violent”, Rich Marianos, past associate director of the U. S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the present head of the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network, told Fox News Digital of the plan. The FDA confirmed to Fox Digital on Monday that the proposed law hasn’t been finalized, but that as of January 3, the Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products had undergone a regulatory assessment. A spokesman for the FDA told Fox Digital that the proposed rule,” Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Certain Tobacco Products,” is displayed in the Office of Management and Budget’s ( OMB) ROCIS system as having completed regulatory review on January 3. According to the FDA, a proposed item standard to demonstrate a maximum smoking level to lessen the addictiveness of cigarettes and other combusted tobacco products is expected to be one of the most significant population-level actions in the history of U.S. tobacco product regulation, according to the FDA. The FDA is currently unable to comment on the plan until it is published. Fox New Digital contacted the White House about issues if it were to go into effect, but was unsuccessful in responding. FIRM ADMIN FACING CONGRESSIONAL PROBE OVER PROPOSED BAN ON MENTHOL CIGARETTES Former US President Barack Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act in 2009, which gave the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco items. In the decades since, the company has worked to reduce smoking levels, including when, under the Trump administration, Scott Gottlieb, the agency’s former FDA director, made the announcement that it would seek to impose a strict cut in smoking in an effort to assist adult smokers quit. Under the Biden administration, the FDA made plans for the proposed rule to lower nicotine levels so they could be less addictive or non-addictive in 2022. FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said at the time,” Lowering nicotine levels to minimally addictive or non-addictive levels would lower the likelihood that future generations of young people will become addicted to cigarettes and help more than one who is already addicted to smoking.” Lowering the levels of nicotine in commonly sold cigarettes and other tobacco products would open the door for the illegal trafficking into the United States, Marianos told Fox News Digital. ” This decision is being thrown down the throat of the public 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”, Marianos said. He explained that Mexican cartels are well-positioned to bring illegal tobacco across the border, just like they do with fentanyl, which has devasted communities across the country, while Chinese criminal organizations have some of the best fake shops ranging from baby formula to cigarettes, and Russian organized crime groups have their foot in the door in cities across the country, including in bodegas and other stores that sell tobacco products. According to Marinos, criminal organizations are likely to take notice of the proposal if it is implemented, and that will increase their tobacco operations, which he claims will bring about an economic benefit for the criminals. American citizens who want to purchase cigarettes with higher nicotine levels would need to go through the illegal channels to do so, similar to buying “loosie” cigarettes on the streets of New York, which puts them at increased risk of criminal activity as well as providing them with cigarettes that aren’t regulated and coming from foreign countries. WANT TO FINISH SMOKING FOR GOOD? Democrat and Republican lawmakers have already been warned that tobacco trafficking in the United States poses a serious threat to national security and has already established a new camp with free resources to occupy. ” 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,'” Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., Mark Warner, D-Va., Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., and then-Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., wrote in a 2023 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Public opinion has recently highlighted the financial connections between Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs ) involved in narcotics and fentanyl trafficking and these tobacco smuggling activities. A reduction in nicotine levels would defeat the government’s stated goal of weaning smokers off cigarettes, according to Marianos, who added that Mexico’s TCOs pose a serious threat to American national security and public health. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP”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 believed that we were attempting to avoid that and make the country safer. Well, if you take down the nicotine levels, people are going to smoke more. That is proven. All you need to do is drive here in DC and observe the workers taking their smoke breaks, he said, adding that as more people take smoke breaks in alleys to get their nicotine fix, their productivity will decrease. In what was described as a” critical” component of President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, the Biden administration had previously made an attempt to completely ban menthol cigarettes. However, the announcement was abrupt delaying such regulations as the general public decried the move. Some organizations claimed that the ban would open the door to illegal menthol sales, while others claimed that it unfairly targeted minority communities.
Experts claim that the government of Bahrain is working to effectively ban tobacco in its 11th hour plan as a “gift” to cartel.
