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The New York Times
reports that legislation that would allow the FDA to oversee tobacco
products in order to reduce smoking among youths by banning most flavored
cigarettes (such as cinnamon, clove, mocha, strawberry—such an ingenious
industry, is tobacco) will not include the beloved menthol flavor.
Now, why is that? The
reason seems simple—menthols make up more than a fourth of the $70 billion
American cigarette market and therefore are important to Philip Morris USA, the
only tobacco company that is negotiating in favor of the legislation.
But there’s more to this than meets the eye. Or rather if you open your eyes, you’ll see
more—say in African American neighborhoods, where the soothing blue, green and
aqua bill boards virtually shout menthol cigarette ads to passers by. And guess what—that’s because—or why—almost
75 percent of black smokers use menthol brands, while only 25 percent of white
smokers prefer them.
Lucky for white smokers, since there is mounting evidence
that menthols pose a greater health risk than unflavored smokes. At the very least, it’s becoming fairly clear
that they are more addictive. And Robert
G. Robinson, recently retired associate director in the office of smoking and
health at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is quoted: “I think we can say definitively that menthol
induces smoking in the African-American community and subsequently serves as a
direct link to African-American death and disease.”
The backers of the bill claim that passage would be
impossible without leaving menthol out of it.
(Passage will be tough anyway, it seems, what with tobacco-state
legislators and the White House against it --surprise, surprise.)
But wait. Here’s
something to consider. Let’s say that
studies showed that the group that preferred menthol brands was white,
college-educated professional men and women.
Do we honestly think menthols would be left out of the legislation?
Note: the name for this kind of thinking and legislating is,
you guessed it, de facto racism.
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