This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, March 15th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The FDA, at least for now, is moving forward with proposed regulations to ban menthol cigarettes, Cato's Jeff Singer and

Guy Bentley of the Reason Foundation detail why banning mentholz would create some of the predictable

results of prohibition and why it makes little sense as youth smoking has plunged in recent years.

Before we get into what the FDA is doing today, let's get some backstory here.

The FDA at some point decided that flavored cigarettes because they were

appealing to children and was never really clear whether this was an intention, I suppose, of the companies selling

them because plenty of adults liked flavored cigarettes, but kids might be attracted to them as well.

So what was the decision made, what, the 90s, early 2000s, guy?

What, how did this come together?

So the last time the FDA really looked into this was 2009 in the Tobacco Control Act

where they did ban all flavored cigarettes with the exception of menthol so actual like so your candy cigarettes and things like that

that was seen as particularly youth appealing. They decided not to go for a menthol ban and that was at the time

supported by people like the campaign for tobacco free kids

but since they said there is a large adult market it might have massive unintended consequences

and I think they also possibly knew that it was not an overwhelming favorite with youth.

I think back then it was still around 50-50.

Now it's a minority choice of the tiny numbers of youth who do smoke.

So they did make an exception back in 09.

Okay, so Jeff, what do we know about menthol cigarettes? Are they particularly

damaging to people relative to the straight up tobacco?

...