Kirsten John Foy, founder of the Arc of Justice, a community organization, speaks in a “Menthol funeral” performance at Washington, DC on January 18, 2024. In this program organized by the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, a federal banned harmful effects to raise awareness about a federal banned harmful effects. Josh brown/African American tobacco controls courtesy of Leadership Council.
Clermont, Fla .- It was just after the sunset, and the evening traffic was echoing on the highway 50 as 24-year-old Eliza Kinlav had popped up to smoke something in her local Valgrain. He finished a long day to work in a local roof company, and he was still wearing his neon green work T-shirt and a red Beni.
After their innings, the kinlav usually smokes to smoke in the air. Cigarettes of his choice: a cooling, mint neuport.
Kinlav, who started smoking at the age of 19, instead of relying on cigarettes only “wants to breathe and take one day in a day”, but it is not easy to leave. He tried twice and planned to try again.
“Eventually, it catches you,” Kinlav said, one of the odd numbers of black smokers who prefer menthol cigarettes. “This is not good for you. It’s not a high. It doesn’t look good.”
Menthol cigarettes can be more addictive than regular cigarettes because the menthol is harsh burning, making smoke easier. Federal people are smoked at the same rates as a whole, but most black smokers-80%-mental cigarettes, and they are more likely to die of smoking disease, according to the federal centers for disease control and prevention.
Over the years, public health experts have advocated high sales taxes or even a lump sum ban on menthol cigarettes. In 2021, the Federal Food and Drug Administration announced a proposal to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes to prevent 650,000 deaths across the country for several decades, according to research cited by the agency.
But after heavy lobbying – and perhaps fear of loss of black votes in an election year – President Biden delayed the final decision on the ban in December. The administration expects to announce a decision next month.
The delay has criticized public health organizations. Meanwhile, some states are working on their own.
Small-shop owners are afraid that they will harm their businesses, and some black leaders say they worry about more policing in their communities.
In 2020, Massachusetts, including Menthol Cigarettes, became the first state to ban the sale of all -flavored tobacco products. California imposed a uniform ban in 2022. This year, bills that will empower state officials to ban the sale of menthol, along with all other flavored tobacco products, are introduced in at least four states (Hawaii, New York, Warmont and Washington). Last year, bills were introduced in at least 10 states.
In addition, according to the campaign for tobacco -free children, more than 190 cities and counties in at least eight states have banned the sale of menthol cigarettes.
24 -year -old Eliza Kinlav smokes after her innings at a local roof company in Central Florida. He enjoys Menthol cigarette and wants to leave, he said, but it is difficult. Research suggests that menthol cigarettes can be more addictive and are used and used by black smokers. Photo by Nada Hasanin/Stateline.
According to the CDC, other minority groups also smoke unevenly: in 2020, 51% Hispanic adult smokers used menthol cigarettes compared to non-Hy-Hycinol Smokers using menthol cigarettes. Research has shown that women smokers and who have Asian, indigenous airports, Alaska natives, LGBT, or who have mental health conditions are also more likely to smoke menthol.
Kinlav said that he is in favor of the ban. “We got to take care,” he said.
Industry influence
But the tobacco industry has long marked menthol cigarettes for black communities. Marketing of Cool and Newport Brand Menthol Cigarettes for Blacks began to gain land in the 1950s, and included focused advertising of popular events in black communities and corporate sponsorship, such as Jazz concert. A 2013 study by Black Middle and High-School students in California found that they were three times more likely than non-black students to recognize cigarette advertisements characterized by Newport.
To call for light on the fact and call for change, last month, dozens of people attended a funeral march in Washington, DC, organized by the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council. Instead of marking the same death, March – people under the leadership of Trumpat players and reminiscent of a cigarette pack were demanding the death of Menthol Cigarettes.
Philip Gardiner, a behavioral scientist and expert of racial health inequalities, who is the co-chairman of the council, said that many presidential administration has “pulled its feet” on the issue.
Gardiner said, “Instead of burying African Americans, let’s bury Menthol,” whose own father died of a smoking disease in 65.
Maryland State Sen Joan c. Banson (D-Prince George). Brian p. File photo by Sears.
In nearby Maryland, the state law is banned on the sale of aromatic e-cigarettes, but exemption for products with menthol-swara. Only another state, Utah, has a similar law. A Maryland Bill that would have banned the sale of all flavored tobacco products last year. A similar bill was introduced and failed in 2020.
Sen Joan c. Banson (D-Prince George )’s husband died of lung cancer complications when he was only 59 years old.
Banson said, “I can personally tell you how harmful the menthol cigarette can be to a person, a person of color.” Benson does not smoke, but she was in contact with her husband with second hand smoke and avoids a cancer. “We do not want any kind of smoking, period in our community.”
An analysis published last month at the Oxford University Press Journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research found that the ban on the sale of menthol cigarettes could help smokers completely leave. Researchers investigated local sanctions in the United States, Canada and the European Union, and found that a quarter of the menthol smokers quit smoking after banning.
Sarah Mills, an assistant public health professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, said Sarah Mills, a prominent writer of the study, said policy makers considering restrictions should be known about long history “to provide funding to various groups of tobacco industry and use front groups”.
Professor Keith Velu at Princeton University, a medical hysterian and book author “Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racel, Marketing, and Untold Story of Menthol Cigarettes”, untold tobacco damage to tobacco black people cannot be reduced to untouched damage.
“If you want to understand how menthol started both and started a leg, then you have to understand the method in which the industry developed tents from the corner level of the road, identifying influential people and then funding politicians who will defend their rights to support civil rights organizations,” Velu said in an interview.
“The history of menthol cigarettes is part of the history of the slow strangulation of black people.”
Pushback on ban
But some opponents of the ban wonder why MLAs are excluding menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products allowing the sale of other dangerous items. Beatries Rodriguez, owner of DAT Hoot Smoke Shop in Apopka, Florida, said the proposed federal sanctions would harm its business.
“As the owner of a small business, obviously it would hurt me,” Rodriguez said. “It will bother me because there are many other things that are more dangerous. Tobacco kills – but it likes, well, kills alcohol, fires pamphlets. ,
Other critics argue that the menthol ban will lead to more polling of black communities. For example, in New York, Black, Puerto Rickon, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Cocks Chair Michael Sols, a Democratic Assembly, a vocal rival.
“We are very cautious about the enforcement on the average New Yorker,” Sols said in an interview, “he worries about” over-enforcement in less communities “.
But the FDA has made it clear that any ban will target retail sales of menthol cigarettes, not those who use them. A news release in the proposed rule stated, “The important thing is that the FDA will not apply to the occupation or use of menthol cigarettes or aromatic cigars against individual consumers.”
Gardiner and Velu said that those who warns of increasing policing are echoing arguments that the tobacco industry has done. He said that the industry often tries to “tap in concerns and concerns” about police violence or aggressive policing that is already present.
Meanwhile, other public health experts say an increase in taxes on menthol cigarettes – a strategy that has been used to reduce overall smoking – will not pack almost the same punch as a restriction.
“You are taxing those who have been targeted by companies,” said Rukija Salbi, a health law professor at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University. “You are not really going to those who have caused losses – which are cigarette companies.”
Salbi also criticized the state’s laws, binding the hands of local authorities that want to tighten the use of tobacco. Republican MPs in Ohio recently stopped cities and counties from passing their own tobacco control ordinances. The American Lung Association says that 39 states have such laws.
Florida, where Kinlav is trying to quit smoking and Rodriguez is concerned about her smoking shop, is one of them.
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