The US Government has been dragging its heels over a decision on whether to ban menthol cigarettes, amid intense lobbying from tobacco companies, shops and industry-backed groups protesting that billions of dollars in sales and jobs will be lost.
The country’s largest tobacco companies have enormous financial stakes in the menthol cigarette market – more than one-third of all US cigarette sales – with Reynolds American, for instance, vowing to fight the ban all the way to the Supreme Court, a battle that could postpone implementation of the final prohibition rule for years.
Just how far these corporations will go to protect their industry was revealed last week, when university researchers found that more than 90% of nearly a quarter of a million pubic comments in the invited response to a proposal to ban these cigarettes were traceable to Big Tobacco industry content.
The researchers from Rutgers, the state university from New Jersey, discovered that most of the comments on proposed rules were form letters, and nearly half of the letters contained industry content.
When the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed banning menthol cigarettes and flavoured cigars in 2022, around 250 000 public comments flooded in – a record response that led the administration of President Joe Biden to delay a final decision.
The Rutgers Health analysis shows that only a minority came from concerned individuals inspired to speak out about the proposed ban in their own words.
The study in JAMA Network Open examined all 246 808 comments submitted to FDA dockets and found that 97% of those on the menthol rule and 93% on the cigar rule were form letters. Roughly 46% of the menthol form letters contained content traceable to tobacco companies, including Reynolds American’s “Own It, Voice It” campaign and Altria Group’s “Voices for Consumer Choice” campaign. Two percent of all comments were unique.
“The sheer volume of comments was used as a reason to delay a public health policy that would have saved lives,” said Professor Andrea Villanti, from the Rutgers School of Public Health, deputy director of the Rutgers Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies and lead author of the study.
“What wasn’t considered was how few of those submissions were unique or how much tobacco company influence had shaped both the volume and the content of the comments.”
The researchers downloaded the publicly available comments and used statistical software to identify recurring phrases, ultimately matching submissions to 17 distinct form-letter templates. After removing form letters and near-duplicates, they analysed the remaining 3 342 unique menthol comments and 1 432 unique cigar comments.
Even among unique comments, 96% opposed the menthol ban, and 99% opposed the cigar ban. But the leading arguments were economic: loss of revenue and sales, fears of an illicit market and claims that education would work better than prohibition. Few unique comments (3%-5%) addressed the health evidence behind the rules.
The study is part of an ongoing Rutgers project examining how disinformation shaped the debate over menthol and flavoured tobacco policies, work that has traced industry arguments from their origins to their effects.
An earlier study in the project, led by Ollie Ganz, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, analysed direct-to-consumer emails that tobacco companies sent customers during the comment period. The emails urged recipients to “take action” and steered them to company-run websites that assembled personalised anti-ban letters from menus of prewritten arguments, then submitted them to the FDA.
Another study in the project, led by Olivia Wackowski, a professor at the School of Public Health, analysed 122 news articles about the menthol rule and found that press coverage presented a more balanced picture: 75% of articles cited the ban’s potential to reduce disease and save lives, while opposition arguments centred on concerns about increased policing in black communities.
The policing argument invoked the 2014 death of Eric Garner, which came at the hands of New York police who were trying to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes. Villanti said this argument is designed to mislead the public because FDA product standards regulate what tobacco companies can manufacture and sell, not individual purchase or use of these products.
“Taken together, these findings show how the tobacco industry influence can shape policy debates in ways that obscure scientific evidence and distort perceptions of public opinion,” said Kymberle Sterling, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and co-author of the new study.
Menthol cigarettes account for more than a third of the US cigarette market and a majority of the cigarettes smoked by black Americans, and researchers have estimated they caused 378 000 premature deaths in the United States between 1980 and 2018. Menthol anaesthetises the throat, making smoke easier to inhale for first-time smokers; studies show that the products are also more difficult to quit, especially for black Americans.
The FDA sent final rules to the White House for review in 2023, but the Biden administration postponed action in April 2024, and the rules were withdrawn in January 2025.
Villanti said that one in five deaths in the US is still attributable to tobacco smoking, and lack of action on these policies will have lasting impacts on the lives of American people and communities.
Study details
Public Comments and Federal Rulemaking for Menthol Cigarettes and Flavoured Cigars
Andrea Villanti, Marisa Tomaino, Amanda Johnson et al.
Published in JAMA Network on 20 August 2026
Abstract
Importance
In May 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested public comment on proposed rules to ban menthol in cigarettes and characterising flavours in cigars. In 2024, the US Health and Human Services Secretary noted that a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes (MCs) would take more time given the high volume of public comments submitted.
Objective
To characterise the comments submitted to these dockets, including the sources and types of submissions and themes present in unique comments.
Design, Setting, and Participants
In this qualitative study, computer-assisted content analysis was conducted for public comments on the FDA’s MC and flavoured cigar (FC) proposed federal rules submitted from May to August 2022. Iterative data processing identified form letters and unique comments for thematic analysis in the MC comments and was applied to the FC comments. Informed by a validated codebook, deductive automated content analysis identified themes in unique comments. Analyses were conducted from October 2023 to December 2024.
Main Outcomes and Measures
The primary outcomes were identification of comments as form letters, duplicates, or unique, and whether they included arguments for and against the FDA’s proposed rules.
Results
Of 246 808 comments submitted to these dockets (175 285 comments in the MC docket and 71 523 in the FC docket), most were identified as form letters (169 440 MC comments [97%]; 66 640 FC comments [93%]), with only 4 774 comments (2%; 3 342 MC comments and 1432 FC comments) identified as unique. Content tied to specific tobacco companies was identified in 44% of comments in the MC docket (77 445 comments) and 10% in the FC docket (6 883 comments). Most unique comments opposed these bans (3 208 MC comments [96%]; 1 418 FC comments [99%]), with themes that addressed loss of revenue and sales (1 155 MC comments [35%]; 720 FC comments [49%]), illicit market concern (835 MC comments [25%]; 555 FC comments [38%]), and suggesting more effective routes (607 MC comments [18%]; 420 FC comments [28%]) for action than the proposed policies.
Conclusions and Relevance
In this study of nearly 250 000 public comments submitted to inform FDA rulemaking, most comments were form letters that reflected tobacco company talking points. These findings raise concerns about corporations co-opting mechanisms for public comment and distorting the prevalence of arguments to influence public health policy.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
How far should the menthol ban go? Michigan’s Professor Clifford E Douglas
Is the FDA’s cigarette ban just smoke and menthols? – MedPage Today op-ed
Menthol makes smokers want more