Anti-smoking groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government on Tuesday, April 2, 2024, over a long-awaited ban on menthol cigarettes, which has been idling at the White House for months. Associated Press file photo

Jeff Chiu

WASHINGTON — For the second time in recent months, President Joe Biden's administration has delayed a plan to ban menthol cigarettes, a decision that is certain to infuriate anti-smoking advocates but could avoid angering Black voters ahead of November elections.

In a statement Friday, Biden’s top health official gave no timeline for issuing the rule, saying only that the administration would take more time to consider feedback, including from civil rights groups.

“It’s clear that there are still more conversations to have, and that will take significantly more time,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

The White House has held dozens of meetings in recent months with groups opposing the ban, including civil rights organizers, law enforcement officials and small business owners. Most of groups have financial ties to tobacco companies.

The announcement is another setback for Food and Drug Administration officials, who drafted the ban and predicted it would prevent hundreds of thousands of smoking-related deaths over 40 years. The agency has worked toward banning menthol across multiple administrations for more than a decade without ever finalizing a rule.

Previous FDA efforts on menthol have been derailed by tobacco industry pushback or competing political priorities. With both Biden and former President Donald Trump vying for the support of Black voters, the ban's potential impact has been scrutinized by Republicans and Democrats heading into the fall election.

Anti-smoking advocates have been pushing the FDA to eliminate the flavor since the agency gained authority to regulate certain tobacco ingredients in 2009. Menthol is the only cigarette flavor that wasn’t banned under that law, a carveout negotiated by industry allies in Congress. But the law instructed the FDA to continue studying the issue.

More than 11% of U.S. adults smoke, with rates roughly even between white and Black people. But about 80% of Black smokers smoke menthol, which the FDA says masks the harshness of smoking, making it easier to start and harder to quit. Most teenagers who smoke cigarettes also smoke menthols.

The FDA released its draft of the proposed ban in 2022. Officials under Biden initially targeted last August to finalize the rule. Late last year, White House officials said they would take until March to review the measure. When that deadline passed last month, several anti-smoking groups filed a lawsuit to force its release.

Separately, Rev. Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders have warned that a menthol ban would create an illegal market for the cigarettes and invite more confrontations with police in Black communities.

The FDA and health advocates have long rejected such concerns, noting FDA’s enforcement of the rule would only apply to companies that make or sell cigarettes, not to individuals.

Supporters of the plan have tried to assure the White House that getting rid of menthol wouldn’t hurt Biden's support among Black voters.

“There is no political conversation here outside of the manufactured arguments by tobacco lobbyists and those they have paid,” said Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, ahead of the latest announcement. “It is in the interest of the African American community to ensure that their health is the No. 1 priority.”

Smoking can cause cancer, strokes and heart attacks and is blamed for 480,000 deaths each year in the U.S., including 45,000 among Black Americans.