Fair is Fair, says Senator, Even When We\u2019re Talking About Menthol

Most individuals in the tobacco states who have expressed an opinion on the legalization of hemp production expressed a favorable one.

But the senior Senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, who in November had bitterly opposed the proposal of the Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of menthol in cigarettes, took the opportunity last month to point out that menthol might well be less damaging than cannabis.

“Understand that if you begin to loosen up the legal use of cannabis, then we’re going to hold you to the same standards you’ve displayed for everything else,” he said on the floor of the Senate, addressing the FDA. “Everything that you hold a drug manufacturer to, that you hold a drug device manufacturer…and, quite honestly, that you hold the tobacco industry to.”

“If you’re worried about burning a product and inhaling it into your lungs, you better be just as concerned about it as it relates to marijuana,” Burr added.

Burr suggested that there might be an analogy between Canada’s 2017 ban on menthol products to its legalization of recreational marijuana last year. The same thing could happen in the U.S., Burr said. “This is eerily similar to Canada a few years ago, when they banned menthol products,” Burr explained. “How did they follow that up? This year, they legalized cannabis. Maybe that’s the route we’re on.”

For the short term, said Burr, the marijuana industry should be regulated just as tightly as the tobacco industry.

Speaking of North Carolina, quite a bit of this issue is centered on developments there and more particularly in the Eastern N.C. town of Wilson. On page 24, I report on the success enjoyed so far by Evans MacTavish Agricraft in designing and manufacturing machinery to process cannabis. You will be intrigued at what they are doing. And on page 16, we present an update on Global Labs, the internationally renowned pesticide residue and tobacco constituent testing facility. You will be surprised to learn—or maybe you won’t--about some of the new programs that could be coming up. In other articles, regular TI contributor Iqbal Lambat outlines the current “Macro” trends in the tobacco industry, and the noted flavorist Roger Penn addresses the place of flavorings in the current tobacco climate. And check out our short item pages TI Digest and Leaf News for timely reporting on the latest events, including how hemp is becoming a reality in U.S. agriculture (page 32) and why the decision on how much tobacco to plant is especially critical for farmers this year (page 32).

—Chris Bickers, Editor-In-Chief