John,

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the first U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health.

This landmark report sounded the alarm that smoking causes lung cancer and other deadly diseases and was the catalyst for decades of action to reduce tobacco use and save lives.

The U.S. has made remarkable progress in the last 60 years.

The fight against tobacco has been one of our nation’s greatest public health achievements.

• We've cut the adult smoking rate by 73% since 1965.
• We've cut the youth smoking rate by over 90% since the 1990s.
• These reductions have saved 19 million lives.

We've developed proven strategies to reduce tobacco use, including tobacco tax increases; comprehensive smoke-free air laws that prohibit smoking in all workplaces and public places; well-funded, sustained tobacco prevention and cessation programs that include mass media campaigns; and regulations restricting the marketing and sale of tobacco products, especially to children.

But the fight is far from over.

Thanks to the tobacco industry’s relentless marketing and its unceasing opposition to lifesaving policies:

• Tobacco use remains the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S. and around the world.
• Tobacco still kills nearly half a million Americans and over eight million people worldwide every year.
• Tobacco costs the U.S. over $241 billion in healthcare expenditures each year. 

This is unacceptable when we have proven policy solutions that can end this public health epidemic if fully implemented.

This anniversary comes at a pivotal time.

At this very moment, the Biden Administration is deciding whether to move forward with the FDA's plan to eliminate menthol cigarettes. 

This long-overdue step would have a profound impact on public health in the United States and save hundreds of thousands of lives, especially the lives of Black Americans who have long been targeted by the tobacco industry with predatory marketing for menthol cigarettes.

The plan to eliminate menthol cigarettes is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence showing that they are more addictive, easier for kids to start smoking and harder for smokers to quit. It's also critical to advancing Biden Administration priorities, especially the President’s Cancer Moonshot, as smoking causes 30% of all cancer deaths and is “the biggest single driver of cancer deaths in this country,” as the Administration has repeatedly stated.

If the Biden Administration is truly committed to saving Black lives, to following the science, and to ending cancer as we know it, it must issue the final rule prohibiting menthol cigarettes without further delay. Delays cost lives, especially Black lives.

We fought hard to get here, and we're fighting hard to make sure the administration does the right thing.

You can make a difference at this critical time by sending a message to the White House. 

Thanks for standing with us,

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