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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cI would reverse that policy. I think it\u2019s ridiculous what Biden\u2019s doing,\u201d Ron DeSantis said on Wednesday\u2019s WFEA\u2019s Morning Update with Drew Cline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The White House hasn\u2019t yet committed to the menthol ban, it should be noted, but it\u2019s a priority of the Food and Drug Administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Florida Governor cast aspersions at prohibition, saying that \u201cthings that have been legal for a long time, when you try to take it out, then there ends up just being a black market.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few years back, DeSantis vetoed a bill that would have raised the age to buy tobacco to 21 that would have also banned \u201cliquid nicotine\u201d products, contending at the time that would have empowered the \u201chazardous black market.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During Wednesday\u2019s interview, he made similar points about that bill, using the menthol moment to defend the rights of people to embrace vapes for smoking cessation purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf somebody goes from cigarettes to vape, it actually is much less damaging than doing the normal cigarettes. So these people were addicted to nicotine, this is what they had. And if you would have allowed that bill to go in, a lot of them probably would have gone back to cigarettes. That would have been totally counterproductive,\u201d DeSantis said, eliding the fact that in this case, menthol is primarily used for the cigarettes he calls \u201cdamaging.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Governor\u2019s main beef is with \u201can administrative bureaucracy deciding it wants to ban something \u2026 a runaway bureaucracy that decides it does like this or doesn\u2019t like that and you can\u2019t vote those bureaucrats out of office.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Governor isn\u2019t alone among Florida politicians in his position. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio wrote a letter to the FDA in July warning that banning these products from being sold legally could lead to the black market filling in the holes. U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz argues that a menthol ban could lead to Hamas and Hezbollah filling the market void by trafficking the banned product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though DeSantis\u2019 enthusiasm for menthol cigarettes is now on the record, it arguably contradicts his belief that cannabis should be banned, in part because he doesn\u2019t like the \u201cstench.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat I don\u2019t like about it is if you go to some of these places that have done it, the stench when you\u2019re out there, I mean, it smells so putrid,\u201d he told reporters in 2022. \u201cI could not believe the pungent odor that you would see in some of these places. I don\u2019t want to see that here. I want people to be able to breathe freely.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Florida\u2019s Governor is grumbling about moves from the Joe Biden administration that could prohibit the sale of menthol cigarettes. \u201cI would reverse that policy. I think it\u2019s ridiculous what Biden\u2019s doing,\u201d Ron DeSantis said… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39564,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39562\/revisions\/39564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}