Smoking Mad Blacks

F.D.A. to Examine Menthol Cigarettes
By DUFF WILSON/NY Times

For the cigarette industry, the menthol debate is about to flare up again.

The new federal advisory board for tobacco regulation plans to meet for the first time Tuesday in Washington. Topping the agenda is one of the most contentious, and racially charged, health issues that Congress deferred last year when it empowered the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco for the first time.

The question: what to do about menthol flavorings in cigarettes, which account for almost a third of the nation’s $70 billion cigarette market?

Opponents of smoking, seven former secretaries of health and many members of Congress argued for an outright ban of menthol in the tobacco law last year. They said that the flavoring, which cools and masks the harsh taste of cigarettes, was used as a lure for young smokers while also being marketed to black smokers, who have the highest rates of smoking-related disease.

So it is no coincidence that menthol will be the first matter taken up by the F.D.A.’s new Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee when it begins a two-day meeting on Tuesday.

Menthol brands are preferred by 75 percent of African-American smokers. And while studies indicate that blacks smoke fewer cigarettes a day than other categories of smokers, they have greater rates of lung cancer, heart disease and strokes. The Congressional Black Caucus, complaining of predatory marketing, was among the groups that had urged stronger action against menthol in the legislation.

I can tell you one thing. I don't want to be working in the liquor store anymore if this thing passes. I'm liable to catch a beating when one of our many black customers comes in for their E&J Brandy. If's bad enough we don't carry Kools. If we have to stop selling Newports then there may be a riot.

I honestly can't understand why these cigarettes would be banned. Don't get me wrong. I have no doubt the cigarette companies target black consumers with them and that was wrong to begin but I would assume most black people (or any other people)that continue to smoke these cigarettes know well the risks and do it anyway because they want to. Why are we punishing them? Obama has to step in and do something about this. He's a smoker right? Not sure if he smokes Menthols but I'm sure at some point in his life he's strolled into a liquor store and asked for a pack of "what I is."