Trump in Power
Why Big Tobacco is betting on Trump

As the industry fights a ban on menthol cigarettes, a Reynolds American subsidiary has become the largest corporate donor to the main pro-Trump super PAC.


A woman smokes at the 2020 “Million MAGA March” in Washington, D.C., held to protest the results of the presidential election. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

By Isaac Stanley-Becker, Dan Diamond and Josh Dawsey
September 18, 2024 at 7:52 a.m. EDT

America’s top tobacco regulator was on a work trip in the Netherlands in September 2019 when he got wind of President Donald Trump’s plan to take abrupt action on vaping, the booming business offering a substitute for smokers but presenting hazards of its own. ... “This was coming out of left field,” said Mitch Zeller, at the time the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s tobacco center.

Zeller supported the plan Trump put forward the next day in the Oval Office: removing mouthwatering flavors, such as mango and mint, that were making e-cigarettes so popular with teenagers. But he feared that Trump’s hasty rollout would doom the effort, he said in a recent interview. ... Indeed, Trump soon shelved the proposal amid pressure from lobbyists and political advisers who warned the move could endanger his 2020 reelection campaign because of the popularity of vaping, the heating of nicotine to make an inhaled aerosol.

Four years later, the tobacco industry is banking on Trump’s chaotic approach to public health — and pliable views on policy — as it confronts a new challenge to its bottom line: efforts by regulators in the Biden administration to ban menthol cigarettes, which represent 36 percent of the cigarette market.

The top corporate donor to the main pro-Trump super PAC is a subsidiary of Reynolds American, the second-largest tobacco company in the United States and the maker of Newports, the No. 1 menthol brand in the country. The subsidiary, RAI Services Company, has given $8.5 million to the super PAC, called Make America Great Again Inc., federal records show. The company does not appear to have contributed money to groups backing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

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Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.

By Isaac Stanley-Becker
Isaac Stanley-Becker is an investigative reporter on the national staff.follow on X isaacstanbecker

By Dan Diamond
Dan Diamond is a national health reporter for The Washington Post. He joined The Post in 2021 after five years at Politico, where he won a George Polk award for investigating the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic.follow on X @ddiamond

By Josh Dawsey
Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.follow on X @jdawsey1