Clarence Page: A ban on menthol cigarettes? It’s about time

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Apr 29, 2022

Smoking rates overall have been falling for 20 years, with a small uptick reported in 2020 that coincided with the pandemic. Nevertheless, cigarettes are estimated to cause 480,000 deaths each year. It was not for nothing that my generation and our elders called them “cancer sticks” and “coffin nails.”

In 2013, the FDA declared menthol to be “likely associated with greater addiction,” since menthol smokers showed greater signs of dependence and were less likely to quit successfully.

Yet it took until now to call for a ban on menthol flavoring against heavy pushback from the industry and its Black community allies, not because they like cigarettes but out of fear of the “over-policing” that enforcement of the ban might bring.

To understand what they mean, one need only remember the video-recorded death of Eric Garner, an unarmed Black New York man who died in a prohibited chokehold when police arrested him for selling loose single cigarettes on a Staten Island sidewalk in 2014.

So, while NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the ban a “win for justice” and a “victory for Black America,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, has arranged a meeting with the Biden administration, saying the ban would lead Black smokers to turn to dangerous alternatives, including criminal activity.

Not insignificantly, Sharpton also has acknowledged that a major tobacco lobbying firm, King & Spalding, has supported his organization for two decades, although he would not say by how much.

If cigarettes or cigars are outlawed, by his reasoning, only outlaws will smoke. He’s not alone in his reasoning. To avoid creating new crises of over-policing, we should penalize tobacco sales and distribution, not use.

A ban on sales of what we know to be dangerous products is not a perfect solution. But, after years of mounting tobacco-related illnesses and deaths, it moves us in the right direction. When cigarettes are outlawed, for example, it’s harder for me to fall back into my old unhealthy habit.

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)