It's not the government banning one specific flavor because it is popular with black people. It is the government first banning every flavor except the one popular with black people and now circling back to make the rules uniform.
> One studyExternal Link Disclaimer suggests that banning menthol cigarettes in the U.S. would lead an additional 923,000 smokers to quit, including 230,000 African Americans in the first 13 to 17 months after a ban goes into effect. An earlier studyExternal Link Disclaimer projected that about 633,000 deaths would be averted, including about 237,000 deaths averted for African Americans.
Then they go on to rationalize those positions about African Americans because that progress hasn’t been experienced by everyone equally.
I am not stating any position whether specifically targeting black people in this ban is good or bad. I am only pointing out that this group is specifically mentioned in the press release.
I don't see any rationalizations - here are the basic facts:
1. Menthol is the last flavor that's available for sale
2. Black people are extremely over-represented among smokers of menthol cigarettes.
Stating that banning of other flavors (except Menthol!) didn't have a proportionate effect among black smokers is not rationalization - that's just a fact. I don't know why anyone would be uncomfortable with this. The reason Menthol is being banned is not because its popular among black people (which is what gp asserted and you appear to be opposing).
The data suggests, as mentioned in the press release, African Americans disproportionately favor menthol flavored cigarettes. Failing to ban such previously is unfortunate but not racist and certainly not blatantly racist unless there was intent to disproportionately harm African Americans. Prior intent was not mentioned in the press release.
No, it was very much racist.
> and certainly not blatantly racist unless there was intent to disproportionately harm African Americans.
Both that the exception would have disproportionate impact on African-Americans and that the overt logic of the flavor ban applied equally to menthol was well known when the flavor ban was adopted. Intent is the only reasonable conclusion.
Coincidence is not racism. Inventing a story from imagined assumptions isn't helpful for people disadvantaged by actual racism.
> ...address health disparities experienced by communities of color, low-income populations, and LGBTQ+ individuals, all of whom are far more likely to use these tobacco products
So yes, one motivation for an action like this is that an enemy against those groups wants to deprive them of something that they use more than others.
Another motivation for the exact same action is that an ally aligned with those groups wants to remove something that harms them more than others.
Unfortunately, intent is hard to measure, and the behavior is very similar. I think one of the key differentiators is whether that removal extends only to the class being 'protected' or whether it extends to everyone. To extend your hypothetical example, if people without a high school diploma were prevented from purchasing lottery tickets, and those with college degrees (like the people passing the legislation and their peers) were allowed to buy them at a discount rate, that would indicate malicious intent and discrimination against those who are less educated. On the other hand, if you take away lotto tickets from everyone, including depriving yourself of the ability to buy them, because they're universally bad and also because they cause an unusually high degree of harm to those with less education, that looks more like benevolent motivation. Of course, if you didn't buy them in the first place then your sacrifice doesn't mean as much...
This point raises a third issue: should one at all submit to the whims of the crab bucket , the benevolence of its motives notwithstanding?
Very, very good point. It's not the only measure, I think, but it's certainly one of the big ones.
If one subscribes to that, why even bother with democracy at all?
I'm not sure where the number '20 million menthol users' keeps coming from, perhaps somewhere in the data behind [1]? Regardless, [2] and [3] suggest that somewhere around 20% of the African American population smokes tobacco in some form. Among those 20% of black Americans who smoke about 85% use menthols.
[1] https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/cbhsq-report...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/african-americans/in...
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/african-americans/in...
(I mean that seriously not as a joke...although there is some natural humor in it as well)
Mexicans like tequila because it's made from agave which is easy to grow in the desert. Mexicans have loved tequila since before europeans even landed in mexico.
And yeah, I know that’s not actually the message. But as I read it, “banning menthols because they disproportionately harm underrepresented groups” is not so semantically different from the other version.
I mostly think it’s an area where we should all have our eyes peeled, basically. Like I said, I’m fully in agreement with this decision. Just hits my “maybe weird?” radar.
I find the “company X is targeting [arbitrary subcategory]” argument to be totally asinine btw. Is Krispy Kreme targeting fat people by offering free donuts for people that get COVID-19 vaccines?
Lastly there is nothing more patronizing than telling a black person that you’re preventing them from buying menthol cigarettes for their own good.
Man I hate the whole “safety culture” crowd. I find it such an insufferable ideology. But then again I’m explicitly not a collectivist so that’s par for the course.
From the paper:
Its cooling effect may contribute to the intensity of smoking (deeper inhalation and/or more prolonged breath holding) resulting in greater exposure to tobacco smoke toxins. The effect of menthol through increasing the permeability of cell membranes results in a greater absorption of smoked toxins [2,3] Ahijevych and Garrett[2] reported higher cotinine levels in mentholated cigarettes compared to nonmentholated cigarettes, suggesting greater nicotine absorption per cigarette. Clarke et al.[3] found that mentholated cigarette smoking was associated with higher serum cotinine and carbon monoxide levels per cigarette.
I should mention I oppose these bans regardless of whether menthol really is or isn’t dangerous, but interesting to know it increases cellular permeability. And seems like a good bit of increased heart/cardiac effects.
It gives more pleasure so it hooks you on more. So yes, it’s more harmful, no? When I was smoking cigarettes back in the day, my fav was West Ice. They tasted really good and didn’t have bad aftertaste. It was easier to smoke more and smoke one only for the menthol taste.
LOL are they really doing that? That's funny considering that obesity and diabetes are both risk factors for poor COVID-19 outcomes.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm
>Percent of adults aged 20 and over with overweight, including obesity: 73.6% (2017-2018)
Since COVID targets older people more often, this may match the adult population within these groups, as the population becomes more overweight each year and people get heavier and slightly shorter as they age.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/abc7ny.com/amp/free-food-vaccin...
You actually get a donut per day! The foundation of a healthy diet.
Funny clip from Yes, Prime Minister https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWxukctTlsY
I think choice is good, and taxing appropriately a good measure. Not sure about today's health and safety obsession in general. Wonder if in today's world (hypothetically given the same technological means as back then) we would ever try something like a lunar landing. And one wonders what we will forbid in 20, 30 or 40 years. Prohibition again? All those "poor people, suffering from alcoholism, disproportionately those who can't afford therapies (esp with regards to long term alcoholism), people on the fringes of society, who we must help, and who can't be trusted to make their own choices, because _we_ know better"?
You think all these Addy popping, Vyvanse downing, benzo-calming programmers aren't dying way earlier? You are fooling yourselves so hard.
But yeah, I also am concerned about how safety driven we are for things and unwilling to take risks as a culture but that might be recency bias because I'm reading "Where is my flying car?" and they basically make the same point about the regulatory state stymieing innovation in the name of safety (often for absurd things like nuclear)
With alcohol: how to factor in violence due to alcohol? How much less police incidents Friday / Saturday evening due to less alcohol? But what about people maybe going out less than before, or spending less money when doing so (will they pay the same prize for drinks if there's no alcohol involved)? What about sports betting and gambling industry (where it's legal)? How will it affect illegal drug use (we've been through that, but it's been long enough for people to say "well, it was different than").
Even the death statistic is tough to do. "Pre-mature death due to smoking", maybe the person also was overweight and had diabetes, how do you estimate how long this person would have lived, if they didn't smoke?
In every step of the way is the possibility for variance. Social sciences, from sociology, to psychology, to health, is such a minefield. Medicine of course is half and half. You can do a lot of stuff on the level of biology, chemistry, hard science in a lab, but health benefits/damages are "observed" in practice (observational studies). And the number of problems there are just ... huge.
I could go on and on and on...
If you increased the taxes enough to change behavior, that would imply that people who wanted to smoke were made unable to. If all the people who want Menthols after your tax increase can still afford them, then it would not stop them, by definition. Consequently, vice taxes are always either ineffectual, or a ban that only applies to the poor.
Increasing the price isn't necessarily about making it inaccessible to people so they stop smoking (though it is a minor part of it that is a nice side-effect), it is to make sure that the additional burden placed on the healthcare system by those people is balanced out by taxes paid in form of increased prices on tobacco products.
If people don't stop smoking, then might as well make sure they cover the extra cost they add to the healthcare system. Seems pretty fair.
To be clear, this statement I made has nothing to with my views on the specific menthol ban in question, as I am still not sure how I feel about it. I was just discussing the hypothetical non-existent strategy of just more taxing on tobacco products instead of outright banning them.
That only makes sense in places where the taxes go to healthcare organizations. In the American system, that doesn't happen - there's no way that a city will hand the proceeds of its tobacco taxes to insurance companies.
Tobacco companies already pay states a bunch of money from their 1998 settlement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
It's over $200 billion and growing. They're more than compensated.
Cigarettes and tobacco products are already heavily taxed for the user. Both the federal government and the state government makes a lot of money off people's addiction, and it's an addiction they can't break (obviously).
https://igentax.com/cigarette-tax-state/
Time to leave smokers alone. Many if not most of them got hooked as kids and as a society we just keep punishing them for their "moral failure."
A 10% increase in tobacco price results in a 4% decrease in tobacco demand: https://www.who.int/tobacco/economics/taxation/en/
I don't know if that counts as "ineffectual" in your book, but its not nothing.
2. When you increase taxes you get smuggling and illegal dealing with all the violence it brings.
Assume that, on average, smokers die at 75, non smokers die at 80, and everyone gets social security pensions at 65.
Then smokers pensions only cost 67% of non smokers pension, even though they pay in 100% as much.
My numbers are surely wrong, but all that matters is that smokers die earlier than non smokers.
This is also the hard to realize way Social Security redistributes from the poor and unhealthy to the well off and healthy.
Also consider. The life expectancy of a 60 year old is above average. At age 60 you have already "survived" quite a lot of danger (adolescent drug abuse, driving accidents while young, opportunity to be a soldier in a war, crimes of passion in your twenties, mid life crisis, et cetera). So the life expectancy of a 60 year old is above the "average life expectancy", as many die before ever reaching that age.
Isn't economics fun?
A 10% increase in tobacco price results in a 4% decrease in tobacco demand: https://www.who.int/tobacco/economics/taxation/en/
A more effective harm reduction strategy would be to make the things more expensive and inconvenient to purchase. But that's a harder sell than banning flavored tobacco products.
Meanwhile, alcohol comes in numerous pleasant and sweet varieties and you can buy cookies with enough THC to knock out an elephant. It's a bit of a double standard to go after tobacco products, even if they have fewer redeeming qualities and low potential for responsible use.
> Like, I get that’s not exactly what’s going on. But.. it’s a little bit what’s going on?
Like other flavors have been, they are banned because of the youth impact.
The racial skew, and whose youth regulators previously were and weren’t concerned about, is why menthols were previously excluded from the flavor ban, but its kind of weird to call out eliminating the racially-motivated discrepancy as a problem.
Prohibition and the failed drug war have shown us that making something illegal won’t stop demand or supply. So now a bunch of black people who are physically hooked on a specific product are going to have it taken away (I smoked, it was a nightmare fight to quit) and for sure people are going to start selling bootleg product (unless menthol can’t be bootlegged, I know nothing about the creation of this product) and most of them will be black since most of the menthol demand is in black communities.
Unless the police don’t intend to try and stop this we would expect it to increase the amount of police interactions and then naturally increase the number of violent interactions leading to death.
A drop of mint flavoring from the baking aisle at the nearest store on the filter, and a few drops on the unflavored pipe tobacco. It ain't the same, but nobody's gonna complain when the alternative is raw.
Wrong. Flavors are simply really effective at hooking everybody.
I watched this with a friend of mine who absolutely thought the same way as you. We got him a couple different flavored ones to try--all non-nicotine.
His reaction: "Alright, you win. You have to physically take the strawberry ones away as I will absolutely drain them all."
The flavors allow the industry to find the one that you personally find agreeable. Add nicotine on top of that and you have a device for personalized maximal addiction.
Remember when Internet addiction was a big concern?
That is grossly unfair to the many of us who have absolutely nothing to do with the latest Social-Garbage-As-A-Service fads.
Just because VCs will only fund Internet Junk Food does not mean that all software that exists does that.
There is a lot of software out there that isn't dedicated to triggering human dopamine receptors. You don't hear a lot about it as it's just part of the job.
And I didn't choose to have integrity--it's just that nobody ever offered me enough money to compromise it. :)
I was just talking with some online friends yesterday who smoke and say they would never have started if it weren't for menthols, so I think you're wrong about this.
I will also note that my friends started when they were teens and no longer smoke menthols.
In most societies, a "vice" is a just a habit that the upper middle class disapproves of. In the 1950's, the upper middle class enjoyed smoking cigarettes so that was fine and dandy, but marijuana was the devil. Today, the upper middle class loves marijuana and finds cigarettes distasteful, so we have smoking bans alongside marijuana legalization.
If I have to take a guess, you might be thinking of healthcare costs and having to subsidize smokers. But if that's a concern, I feel we should avoid universal healthcare proposals (like Medicare for All) and instead let people choose what insurance coverage they want from private companies, from a menu of choices, so that they pay for what the coverage they want based on who they are and the habits they have. I suggest this path because everyone has a different idea about what they want covered. Some may not want to subsidize smokers, some may not want to subsidize abortions, some may not want to subsidize healthcare for the obese, some may not want to subsidize puberty blockers for children, and so on.
Ultimately, all of this is leading us back to what I feel the US got right in the past - favoring choice, control, and responsibility at the individual level instead of increased government size, regulation, and paternalism.
This is kind of a serious question. I haven't smoked one in twenty years, but now I have an intense craving.
To walk down your list:
- Alcohol can be safely consumed in moderation, and is less prone to addiction. This comes the closest, though.
- Cars have lots of places where they can be safely operated above that speed, and fast travel has lots of benefits.
- The potential benefits of the stock market are fairly obvious. The risks are extremely, immediately obvious, including to the person doing the money-losing.
Tobacco can be consumed in moderation. I'll smoke a Wood Tip Wine Black and Mild about once a month, and my pipe on an occasional beautiful day.
The benefits are the extreme joy it brings me. It's one of my favorite things in life, and they're going to take it away.
Nicotine is amazingly pleasant and performance boosting unlike alternatives.
A good read:
Because it's patronizing and soft bigotry of low expectations - something most of these policies either are ignorant towards or is the exact intention. It's a fact that menthol cigarettes attract youth. It's also a fact that "On average, African Americans initiate smoking at a later age compared to Whites." and "African Americans smoke fewer cigarettes per day":
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/african-americans/in...
So most adult blacks are making conscious decisions themselves to start smoking when they are adults. And since 86% of blacks and 46% of hispanics prefer menthol cigarettes over regular ones, the adults enjoy that flavour. But this ban is patronizing them as if the adult blacks are too stupid to think for themselves, so the politicians must treat them as they treat kids and make the decisions to take away bad things from them.
https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/products-ingredients-co...
Instead of making changes so that youth can't get a hand on it, they are banning it because according to their own set standards, somehow adult blacks and hispanics are unable to think for themselves.
Anecdotal but when I immigrated, it was the patronizing comments and policies which I found the most "offensive". It's like being treated as kids instead of grown adults who can make decisions and achieve great things on my own.
Also this ban will result in the same consequences as the "war on drugs" and weed bans. Intentionally or unintentionally, it will end up locking more blacks just like it happened in 1980s and 1990s.
Saying this as someone who's neither touched a cigarette in my entire life, nor do I like the smell of it or weed. But I find any such overreach by the federal government to be useless with bad consequences. Better solutions would be to legalize weed, menthol cigarettes etc and put efforts towards stopping youth from getting their hands on them.
Why do government responses have to be framed as "arm over your shoulder" do-gooder decisions rather than evidence-based decisions when there's already lots of data?
IDK, maybe the "think of the children!" line and knee-deep assumptions of helping disadvantaged groups is all that's needed to stir government policy vs analyzing perspectives from a scientific approach.
I mean, it's still good overall, and it's a net benefit to reduce long-term smoking.
Just don't let the crazies make everything about race. About all policies are going affect some demographics more than other.
Banning menthol cigarettes is an easy choice if you accept some paternalistic policies. Big win for little cost.
But man, “ban menthols because Black people like them” sure feels a little weird.
Like, I get that’s not exactly what’s going on. But.. it’s a little bit what’s going on?
I guess it’s just worth watching closely any time someone talks about protecting disadvantaged groups. I think that is actually what’s happening here, but it’s suuuuch a short rhetorical jump to “well, the under classes can’t be trusted with lottery tickets!” and so on.
Edit: just to make it abundantly clear: I don't think the FDA is actually banning menthols because Black people enjoy them. But I think their reasoning isn't too far from that, and it's worth being watchful for that sort of paternalism, IMO.