The 60 Plus Association, also known as the American Association of Senior Citizens, has posted a comment to the U.S. Food stating its strong opposition to the Agency’s proposed product standard banning flavored cigars, asserting that depriving its members of the privilege of enjoying a good flavored cigar “on the thin reed of any scientific evidence of harm to the public health is the essence of bad and in fact, wasteful government.”
Quoting award-winning science writer and bestselling author Hank Campbell, 60 Plus Founder & Chairman James Martin and President Saul Anuzis point out that cigars “don’t cause lung cancer and you have to consume so many to spike your chances of getting any mouth cancer that it is barely a statistical blip.”
The leaders go on to catalogue the outcomes of recent FDA “incompetence and heavy-handedness” including “fumbled COVID testing,” “interfer(ence) in use of treatments that could have helped arrest the disease among senior populations,” and “all but kill(ing) the vaping industry “that was taking down the real risk to public health from tobacco via harm reduction.” They question why FDA is now “focusing on an industry that represents limited risk to the public health because flavored cigars are used by less than 1% of teenagers.”
Martin and Anuzis conclude by urging FDA to “stop this senseless rule-making and get back to the business of truly serving the public and protecting lives,” suggesting the Agency “give our members the information on risk they need to make their own informed decisions on cigar use and double down on enforcement of existing, effective Tobacco 21 laws.”
