The Biden administration said Friday it is delaying a decision to ban menthol cigarettes, effectively scrapping a proposal that has divided black American voters and fueled multimillion-dollar lobbying campaigns by the tobacco industry and anti-regulatory interests in this presidential election year. .
The White House faced significant resistance from cigarette companies who would lose billions of dollars if they could no longer sell menthol cigarettes. Opponents have proven willing to take to the airwaves to warn of a surge in cartel traffic across the border from counterfeit cigarette smuggling and police brutality targeting black residents if a ban were to take effect.
Those efforts carried risks for President Biden, whose support among black voters has slipped at times in recent months.
Some of Mr. Biden’s top health officials have said a ban would save lives and protect against lung cancer, which is a higher risk for black smokers, who have historically favored menthol cigarettes and are heavily targeted by the tobacco industries.
“This rule has garnered historic attention, and the public comment period has generated tremendous feedback, including from various elements of the civil rights and criminal justice movements,” said Xavier Becerra, secretary of health and human services. “Clearly there are still more discussions to be had and that will take a lot longer.”
The decision underscored a debate among top federal officials about how to weigh the political and legal ramifications of a ban against public health.
A White House spokeswoman declined to comment and referred to Mr. Becerra’s statement.
Mr. Becerra, the administration’s top federal health official, said in an interview earlier this year that he continued to press the White House to support the ban.
“We started putting together all the elements of a good proposal to move forward with something we’ve known for decades: that menthol kills Americans in disproportionate numbers to smoking,” he said.
“It should come as no surprise to anyone that we continue to push ‘all the way,'” he said in the interview.
Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and a proponent of the ban, he told House lawmakers at a budget hearing this month that he hoped regulators would be able to issue a decision by the end of the year.
“It’s one of our top priorities, so I’ll certainly hope so,” he said.
Dr. Califf said that as a practicing cardiologist for more than three decades, he had seen more people die of tobacco-related diseases “than almost any doctor because I was an intensivist dealing with end-stage disease.”
“From the perspective of the FDA and me as an individual, given what I’ve seen in my lifetime, we’re talking about the next 30 years, probably 600,000 preventable deaths,” Dr. Califf said. Most would be black Americans who are consumers targeted by the industry.
The FDA previously described the effort as a “critical piece” of Mr. Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, noting that about 30 percent of all cancer deaths are caused by smoking. Studies have predicted that a ban could prevent up to 650,000 smoking-related deaths.
A majority of Congressional Blacks supported the ban. On Friday, Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, chided the president for choosing politics over people’s lives.
“Today’s news from the Biden administration is a blow to the black community, which continues to be unfairly targeted and unfairly killed by Big Tobacco,” Mr. Johnson said. “Let’s be clear – valuing Black lives should not be used as a pawn to get our people to the polls, but rather as a platform that our leaders refuse to give up.”
Democrats have worried for months about Mr. Biden’s tepid support among black voters — especially blacks. Polls consistently show Mr. Biden with support from a significantly smaller percentage of black men than he had in the 2020 election, which was itself a smaller percentage than Democratic presidential candidates received in previous elections.
The ban had also united a number of public health groups, including leading lung, heart, cancer and pediatric associations.
They cited years of data indicating that menthol cigarettes, which have long been available to African-American smokers, make it more enjoyable to start smoking and harder to quit. Many of those groups expressed their anger Friday at the delay, which it was reported for the first time from the Wall Street Journal.
“The White House has fallen for industry rhetoric, and as a result, public health will suffer,” said Dr. Karen E. Knudsen, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.
The FDA formally proposed the ban in May 2022, saying there were 18.5 million smokers who preferred menthol brands in the United States. Researchers examining similar moves in other nations have estimated that a ban could result in nearly a quarter of menthol smokers quitting.
The proposal reached the White House in October. Soon, official diaries were flooded with meeting requests not only from supporters of the ban but also from opponents, who included tobacco companies, convenience stores and gas station retailers. They predicted the ban would cost them billions of dollars in sales.
Reynolds American, which makes Newport menthol cigarettes, has given millions of dollars in recent years to political action funds benefiting Republican lawmakers, including $1 million in February to a fund supporting former President Donald J. Trump.
“We strongly believe that there are more effective ways to wean adult smokers off cigarettes for good,” said Luis Pinto, a Reynolds spokesman. “We believe that providing access to potentially safer nicotine alternatives, such as properly regulated flavored vaping products – including menthol – is critical to supporting adult smokers to migrate from combustible cigarettes.”
Altria, which makes some Marlboro menthol cigarettes, donated less than Reynolds but also contributed to funds supporting Republican lawmakers.
Republicans in Congress denounced the proposed ban in letters to the Biden administration, warning that it would increase the trafficking of counterfeit cigarettes. Republicans also made a failed effort last year to block the administration from funding any ban projects.
Opponents of the ban have backed commercials criticizing the ban and saying it would fuel illegal tobacco trade and enrich cartels. They helped advance concerns among some black leaders that a ban would encourage law enforcement to target black smokers. (The FDA has said such a ban would be enforced at the manufacturer level.) The Biden campaign has made significant efforts to shore up its support among black voters. He tried a number of get-out-the-vote methods and strategies in South Carolina ahead of the state’s Democratic primary in February and has since devoted resources and organized campaigns targeting black voters in key general election battleground states.
Reynolds argued that the ban would have “serious unintended consequences”, including the use of fake cigarettes. Altria made the same argument and also said historically low and declining youth smoking rates did not justify seeking a ban.
Convenience store owners who predicted the ban would cost them billions staged a demonstration in November outside the office of Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, in Manhattan. On hand were members of the National Action Network, which has acknowledged accepting tobacco funding over the years.
They called Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who died after a police officer placed him in a choke hold. He warned at the event that banning menthol would increase such encounters with police. “This will create more havoc in black and brown communities,” he said.
In an interview after the event, Ms. Carr said she had received no money from tobacco companies. “I can’t be bought,” he said.
The FDA previously said it expected to see the menthol ban finalized by the end of 2023. As the months passed, public health groups stepped up the pressure, holding a “menthol funeral” outside the White House in January to highlight the missed opportunity to extend lives and reduce smoking-related diseases.
In April, Action on Smoking & Health, an advocacy group, and the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council sued the administration in an attempt to take action.
“The arguments of the tobacco industry have prevailed over public health,” Laurent Huber, executive director of Action on Smoking & Health, said in a statement on Friday. “There is no scientific research to support the continued sale of menthol tobacco products.”
David A. Fahrenthold, Reid J. Epstein and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed to the report.