Two Open Seats Give Louisiana a Chance to Lead on Tobacco Harm Reduction

The Congressional Tobacco Harm Reduction Caucus expanded its leadership this month, naming Republican Aaron Bean of Florida and Democrat Jennifer McClellan of Virginia as vice co-chairs. They join co-chairs Guy Reschenthaler, a Pennsylvania Republican, and Don Davis, a North Carolina Democrat, atop a group of roughly forty-five members.

The additions land with the 119th Congress winding down and a contentious midterm cycle bearing down on both parties, which makes the caucus one of the few places in Washington right now where members of opposite parties are still working a shared objective. That objective is straightforward: move more Americans off traditional cigarettes.

The caucus does not argue with the Surgeon General, who continues to recommend that people quit nicotine entirely. It argues with the assumption that quitting is the only outcome worth building policy around. The CDC's own figure is that roughly 10 percent of adult smokers successfully quit in a given year. For the rest, the caucus takes the position that less harm beats full harm, and pushes for policy that treats vapor products, nicotine pouches and heat-not-burn devices as a path off combustible cigarettes rather than a threat to be regulated out of existence. It also works on underage use, smoking prevention, and improving the public's understanding of which products carry less risk than others, and it has pressed the CDC to educate adult consumers and health care professionals accordingly.

Louisiana is already at that table. Rep. Troy Carter of New Orleans is a caucus member, and he deserves credit for engaging early on an issue that gets little attention back home. But one member is a thin delegation for a state with this much at stake. Florida has six members and now a vice chair. North Carolina has six. Texas has five. Kentucky has four, including Hal Rogers and James Comer. Tennessee has four. Virginia has four and a vice chair.

The case for Louisiana being nearer the front of that list than the back is not complicated. Fifteen percent of Louisiana adults smoke, which ranks the state 47th out of 51 in the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids' latest tally, behind only West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. Florida's rate is 10.6 percent. Roughly 7,200 Louisianans die every year from smoking. The state absorbs about $2.19 billion in annual smoking-caused health care costs, much of it running through a Medicaid program that covers a substantial share of the population, which makes this a budget question as much as a health one. Louisiana's cigarette tax of $1.08 per pack ranks 39th. State spending on tobacco prevention and cessation is $4.6 million, or 7.8 percent of what the CDC recommends. Florida spends $90 million.

The opening to do something about it is unusually clean this year. Because Julia Letlow is running for the Senate and Cleo Fields opted not to seek reelection after the redraw, Louisiana will send at least two new members to Congress in January. Both the Fifth and Sixth Districts are open, both fields are crowded, and both are likely to produce freshmen building a committee and caucus slate from a blank page.

The Fifth District field includes Republican Delegation Chair Michael Echols of Monroe, who has spent his legislative career on business and health policy, including work on the state's health professional licensing structure. It includes Rep. Gabe Firment of Pollock, whose background in insurance has shaped a legislator comfortable working through complicated regulatory questions rather than around them. And it includes Sen. Stewart Cathey of Monroe, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee and has built a record on veterans issues, a constituency with smoking rates roughly double the national average.

In the Sixth, Sen. Rick Edmonds of Baton Rouge brings twelve years in the Legislature across both chambers and a pastor's instinct for the human end of a policy question, and Sen. Blake Miguez of New Iberia has been one of the more assertive young conservative voices in the upper chamber.

Louisiana punches well above its size in the House. Mike Johnson holds the Speaker's gavel and Steve Scalise is Majority Leader, which means two of the three most powerful Republicans in the chamber answer to Louisiana voters. Neither is likely to join an issue caucus, and neither should be expected to; that work belongs to the rank and file, and it is where a freshman can move faster than seniority would normally allow. What that leadership does mean is that a Louisiana Republican who takes up this issue is not speaking from the back bench. He is speaking from the state that runs the floor.

Right now the state's entire presence on the caucus is Troy Carter. This is a bipartisan group by design, and Louisiana is currently supplying only one half of it. Two seats open in December, both almost certain to go Republican, both producing members with nothing on their calendar yet and every reason to find an issue where the state's stake is real and the competition for ownership is thin.

Whoever wins the Fifth and the Sixth could put Louisiana on this caucus in a serious way in their first month. .