Big Tobacco

A Massachusetts town that adopted an unusual ordinance banning the sale of tobacco to anyone born in the 21st century is being looked at as a possible model for other cities and towns hoping to further clamp down on cigarettes and tobacco products.

The bylaw — the first of its kind in the country — was adopted by Brookline in 2020 and last week was upheld by the state’s highest court, opening the door for other communities to adopt similar bans that will, decades from now, eventually bar all future generations from buying tobacco.

In July 2014, five New York City police officers approached Eric Garner on a Staten Island sidewalk and accused him of illegally selling "loosies"—individual cigarettes without a tax stamp. Garner resisted handcuffs, and a scuffle ensued. Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed Garner in a prohibited chokehold while pushing him down to the ground face-first. After protesting 11 times that he could not breathe, Garner lost consciousness and died within the hour, sparking national outrage and raising awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Biden administration is moving forward on a plan to mandate the elimination of nearly all nicotine in cigarettes, a policy that would upend the $95 billion U.S. cigarette industry and, health officials say, prompt millions of people to quit smoking.

The Biden administration on Tuesday said it wants to cap the amount of nicotine allowed in cigarettes as part of an effort to stem addiction and reduce smoking-related deaths.

The initiative — which is sure to face pushback from the tobacco industry — was announced as part of the White House’s list of planned federal regulatory actions, released twice a year.

“This proposed rule is a tobacco product standard that would establish a maximum nicotine level in cigarettes and certain finished tobacco products,” the administration said.

The Food and Drug Administration is planning to require tobacco companies to slash the amount of nicotine in traditional cigarettes to make them less addictive, a move intended to reduce smoking, according to a notice posted Tuesday on a U.S. government website.

Facebook Inc. executives have long boasted that its platforms are safe, even as they invested in ways to keep teenagers hooked and hid what they knew about the side effects. Sound familiar? Critics say Big Tobacco once used the same playbook, and it’s fueling a whole new level of outrage against the social media giant.

While federal law makes their entire industry illegal, many marijuana store owners, growers and retailers fear something completely different: Big Tobacco.

Today, most legal recreational marijuana operations are small, limited to a single state and barred from ever getting large by regulators who want to keep a close eye on the fast-growing industry. But those small operators struggle to get bank loans for expansion, often produce an inconsistent product and sometimes have no idea how to balance supply and demand for their crops.