As Americans grapple with sky-high prices at the pump, the worst rate of inflation in more than four decades, increasing crime, a wide-open southern border, a surge in fentanyl deaths, a baby formula shortage, a looming food crisis, a plunging stock market, rolling brownouts, and many other pressing problems, the Biden administration has set its sights on waging war on nicotine.

This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it "plans to develop a proposed product standard that would establish a maximum nicotine level to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes and certain other combusted tobacco products" and that it has "issued marketing denial orders (MDOs) to JUUL Labs Inc. for all of their products currently marketed in the United States."

For those keeping track, these anti-nicotine measures follow the Biden administration's proposal to ban menthol cigarettes, which was announced by the FDA in April.

This makes me wonder if the FDA will also ban sugar-laden foods and drinks, seeing as how sugar is extremely addictive and too much sugar intake leads to obesity, diabetes, heart problems, and all other types of medical maladies.

Interestingly, as the FDA seeks to minimize nicotine content in cigarettes and outright ban all JUUL vaping products, it admits that, "While nicotine is not what makes smoking cigarettes so toxic, it's the ingredient that makes it very hard to quit smoking."

Nicotine is a stimulant, like caffeine, that increases brain activity. Per the National Library of Medicine, "Preclinical models and human studies have demonstrated that nicotine has cognitive-enhancing effects. Attention, working memory, fine motor skills and episodic memory functions are particularly sensitive to nicotine's effects."

Nicotine also provides pleasure, relieves anxiety, helps reduce weight, and fight the effects of Parkinson's disease, Tourette's disease, Alzheimer's disease, ulcerative colitis, and sleep apnea.

Yet, the Biden administration has made nicotine public enemy number one and is on a crusade to prevent we the people from enjoying a little nicotine buzz, if we so choose.

Even worse, the FDA is moving full steam ahead to virtually eliminate the vaping industry's most successful company, JUUL Labs.

However, even the FDA admits that its war on JUUL is without merit: "To date, the FDA has not received clinical information to suggest an immediate hazard associated with the use of the JUUL device or JUULpods."

So, the FDA is forcing JUUL to pull all of its products from store shelves even though it admits that it lacks evidence that these products pose an immediate health hazard? That sounds like a politically inspired decision, not a science-based decision.

Is the Biden administration unaware that multiple studies show that vaping is 95 percent safer than smoking cigarettes? Moreover, the vaping industry has already come under intense scrutiny in recent years, and has been heavily regulated. In 2019, JUUL was forced to pull all of its flavored vape pods and most states have passed laws that have raised the minimum age to buy vaping products to 21.

But it gets worse. As the Biden administration is busy banning nicotine, it is also supplying crack pipes and other drug paraphernalia to known drug users as part of its "safe-smoking kits" initiative.

In fact, as the FDA is launching a full-scale war on nicotine, the Biden administration is allocating $30 million for a "harm reduction" program that distributes crack pipes so drug addicts so can use illegal drugs "safely."

The duplicity on display is absolutely stunning.

Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is senior editor at The Heartland Institute.

Image: PublicDomainPictures.