Prohibiting flavored cigars

All cigars pose serious health risks — including increasing the risk of cancer, heart disease and pulmonary disease — and all cigars are potentially addictive. No one wants that for our nation’s kids.

What’s more, cigar use is greater among our most vulnerable youth in low-income areas and communities of color. This disparity did not happen by accident. For decades, the tobacco industry has aggressively marketed these harmful products in lower-income communities. In fact, according to the latest National Youth Tobacco Survey, cigars are now the most popular tobacco product among Black high school students and the second most popular tobacco product, after e-cigarettes, among all high school students.

Fortunately, after far too many years of delay, the Biden administration and the FDA announced last year that it would begin a rulemaking process to prohibit flavored cigars and menthol cigarettes by April 2022. And in late January, FDA published an update that stated it is “on track” to advance those rules in the spring.

While this is encouraging, the movement on tobacco regulation at FDA has been painfully slow and it will require pressure from all fronts to ensure that this rulemaking is completed as quickly as possible — for the sake of young people in Philly and communities everywhere. We are calling on the FDA to expedite this process and remove these deadly and addictive products from the market as quickly as possible.

While the national consumption of cigarettes decreased by 48% over the last 20 years, overall cigar consumption increased by an astounding 115% during the same time period.

The astronomical rise in popularity should come as no surprise given the marketing ploys used to drive sales among youth. There are countless varieties of cigars, including “little” or “small” cigars, cigarillos and blunts that are popular with kids. Flavors are driving their popularity. Tobacco companies have flooded the market with cigars that target children using hundreds of kid-friendly flavors and are not subject to the same regulations as cigarettes. The products are often much cheaper than cigarettes, with some being sold for 3 for 99 cents.

Philadelphia’s City Council recognized the disturbing problem with youth cigar use and voted in 2019 to eliminate the sale of flavored cigars and cigarillos in all but adult-only stores. But the tobacco industry fought to continue to target their products to children and sued to overturn even this modest effort to protect our kids. The courts ultimately ruled that the city cannot enforce the ordinance because state law preempts it. Philadelphia’s inability to enforce this ordinance only increases the urgency for the FDA to act at the federal level. Our children deserve it.

The FDA must quickly prohibit all flavored cigars and menthol cigarettes. We can’t allow Big Tobacco to addict yet another generation of kids.