Cigarette Ban Bill Exempts Menthol

In a bill that George W. Bush has vowed to veto, Congress gives the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) the power to regulate tobacco products and would attempt to reduce teenage smoking by banning most flavored cigarettes, like clove, mocha, and cinnamon. But menthol cigarettes are exempt from the ban, the ONLY flavor that is exempt from the ban.

An article in The New York Times asks the question, "why would menthol cigarettes be exempt from the ban?" It is the most widely used flavor and is the cigarette of choice for most Blacks in America who smoke. And get this: Black men die from lung cancer at a rate 50 percent higher than white men.

According to the article, menthol cigarettes are "politically off limits" because their sales make up twenty-five percent of the $70 billion cigarette industry in the US. In addition, Philip Morris USA, the industry leader, which is lobbying in support for the legislation, has come to rely on the sale of menthol cigarettes in the Black community and they will not support the bill with a ban on menthol. Since Congress wants to the FDA to get a foothold into the tobacco industry, they would rather leave menthol alone rather than risk the bill's passing.

The controversy over menthol stems from the fact that close to seventy-five percent of all Black smokers use menthol brands... you know them well: Kool, Salem, and Newport billboards litter the landscape of every Black community in the US! If you've never seen a billboard or a bus stop advertisement for any of these brands, then you've never been in a Black community.

Only twenty-five percent of white smokers use menthol cigarettes.

In 1998, the C.D.C. released a report that suggested that menthol "may increase the absorption of harmful smoking constituents." But subsequent studies have proven to be inconclusive about those claims. Some even suggest that the use of menthol cigarettes makes them more addictive and more difficult to quit... once again, there are no studies to support that contention.

Read the 1998 CDC Report on cigarettes in the Black community here.

Read the New York Times article about menthol cigarettes here.


plez sez: everyone who is surprised by this article, raise your hands!

once again, the Black community gets the opportunity to be pillaged and ravaged for corporate profits. a known carcinogen that has more adverse effects on the Black community is permitted to be marketed and sold within the Black community. if strawberry-flavored cigarettes are so dangerous and need regulation, then why are menthol-flavored cigarettes nebulous just because they are the nicotine-delivery method of choice in the Black community? is there no concern that Black children will continue to get hooked on these things while every other community in the nation is free from a similar temptation?

my father smoked socially - when with other men were smoking or when he was driving long distances. he grew up a sharecropper's son, harvesting tobacco in those dingy north carolina fields of his youth. no doubt, he adopted the habit at an early age. my siblings and i were discouraged from smoking cigarettes, drinking liquor (i obviously missed that lecture), and taking dope! i know plenty of people who adopted the nasty habit of smoking at an early age, including my oldest brother who died of cancer four years ago.

damn those Kools and Newport Menthol 100's!