This is a guest opinion column

Black Americans have played pivotal roles in shaping our nation’s identity, cultural traditions, and the very fabric of our daily lives. While the path to true equality has made significant strides in recent decades, this journey continues to be hindered by a dark and troubling phenomenon – the looming shadow cast by the public health system’s long history of exploiting trust and perpetuating discrimination against Black communities. The deep wounds inflicted by unethical programs and practices remain and pervasive inequalities are still deeply entrenched within our healthcare system.

Recently, discussions in Washington’s public health circles have centered around the outright banning of e-cigarettes, measures that are accelerating at alarming rates, particularly for smokers who use e-cigarettes as a less harmful substitute to cigarettes. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Washington’s health policy elite, have fallen woefully short in their efforts to bring genuine fairness, justice, and equity to Black Americans when it comes to the consumption of tobacco and nicotine products.

Banning vaping products that provide viable harm reduction blocks lifelines for those drowning in addiction to cigarettes and contradicts President Biden’s whole-of-government approach to tackle cancer rates and mortality, known as the Biden Cancer Moonshot. Its primary objective is to reduce cancer diagnoses and halve deaths by 2050.

However, Biden’s Cancer Moonshot is being undermined from within. History is repeating itself as the U.S. government agencies, like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) continue their march to restrict nearly all vapes, menthol and flavored. What they have failed to consider and acknowledge is that such policies severely restrict African Americans’ access to less harmful tobacco alternatives.

These deeply troubling inconsistencies raise serious questions that urgently demand answers from the FDA and CTP regarding their commitment to ethical science and the genuine welfare of the public they are meant to serve.

Lasting justice only blooms when impacted populations direct solutions reflecting lived struggle. It comes through funding local leaders doing research on problems affecting their neighborhoods, not imposing top-down rules ignoring barriers in marginalized experiences. Grassroots advocates understand pains and possibilities that policy elites overlook.

Genuine progress looks more like communities having access to effective tools to quit smoking, rather than politicians scoring cheap political points through bans that only serve to entrench dysfunction and perpetuate harm. President Biden’s own administration now undermines him at every turn, with potentially incalculable future implications for the health and well-being of Black Americans.

As a former representative of a predominantly Black district, I am acutely aware that tobacco issues will undoubtedly play a significant role in the upcoming 2024 election. Black voters are an increasingly motivated and influential voting bloc, a reality that lawmakers and regulators must understand and take seriously. They must also recognize that lives are truly at risk if decisive action isn’t taken to curb the devastating impact of cigarette addiction in our communities.

So how might we build trust and equity?

Recognize where past policies caused real harm due to ignorance of realities on the ground. Fund advocates to lead research on community challenges to guide solutions tailored to cultural values. And support efforts that move preemptively against potential bureaucratic barriers to innovations that alleviate suffering, while pursuing safety for all based on facts not agendas.

We must carry on the work of giants who fought not just to tear down unjust systems, but to equitably build new ones uplifting those long excluded. Equality depends on unraveling the hierarchy leaving marginalized groups on lower rungs of health. As a Democrat, I know President Biden and lawmakers have these goals in mind, but I urge them to take a more aggressive stance.

Similarly, U.S. government agencies can only expect the Black community to take seriously their commitments to health equity – as more than deception by the public health establishment, the memory of which is familiar to Black Americans – if they approve non-tobacco nicotine products. Now.

I hope the Biden Administration will support these less harmful alternatives, and, most importantly, save Black lives. It is time to bring real tobacco harm reduction options to the Black community.

Earl Hilliard Sr. was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives serving Alabama’s 7th District from 1992-2003. He was the state’s first African American U.S. Representative since the Reconstruction era. Before his tenure in Washington D.C. , he served in the Alabama House of Representatives and the Alabama Senate throughout the 70s, 80s, and early 90s.