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The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it will ban all menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars. The agency has maintained for nearly a decade that menthol cigarettes, which produce a milder smoke than traditional cigarettes, have played an outsized role in hooking young people on smoking. The FDA first explicitly promised a menthol ban in 2018, but backed off amid intense pushback from the tobacco industry and its allies. (Florko, 4/29)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has moved to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes, citing their disproportionate effect on the health of African Americans. The decision infuriated tobacco companies but delighted anti-tobacco activists and public-health advocates. In its announcement Thursday, the FDA said it’s “working toward issuing proposed product standards within the next year to ban menthol” as a flavor in cigarettes. It also plans to ban all flavors, including menthol, in cigars. The agency will allow an opportunity for public comment, and a ban would likely take years to take effect. (Kary, 4/29)

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday announced its long-awaited plan to ban the last flavor still allowed in cigarettes — menthol — and also said it would ban all flavors of mass-produced cigars, which are popular among youths. The ban would apply only to sales, manufacturing and imports — not personal possession. “Together, these actions represent powerful, science-based approaches that will have an extraordinary public health impact,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner, said in a statement on the agency’s website. “We believe these actions will launch us on a trajectory toward ending tobacco-related disease and death in the U.S.” (Kaplan, 4/29)