Williams: If Black lives matter, ban menthol cigarettes | Columnists

The Meals and Drug Administration’s transfer Thursday to ban menthol cigarettes ought to have been a second of unfiltered elation for Mignonne Man. As a substitute, she was fuming over the gaslighting that adopted.

“Yesterday, I used to be on hearth,” stated Man, chair of the Division of African American Research at Virginia Commonwealth College, who makes a speciality of medical racism and well being inequities. She was indignant over the misinformation and disinformation on social media and different platforms meant to spark African Individuals to defend an indefensible product.

Almost 85% of all non-Hispanic Black people who smoke smoke menthol cigarettes; 30% of non-Hispanic white people who smoke use menthols, in keeping with the FDA.

“I would like the general public to know they’re being focused once more,” Man advised me Friday.

She anticipates an extended authorized combat forward by the cigarette business towards this proposed ban. But when Black lives really matter, we have to look askance at cigarettes, which disproportionately kill Black folks. African American males have the best charges of lung cancer within the nation, in keeping with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.

The tobacco business, Man stated, “went from forcing us to develop and choose the tobacco to essentially focusing on us to make use of the tobacco.”

In an interview with VCU News, she known as the proposed ban — which might additionally prohibit “characterizing” flavors in cigars — “historic and long-overdue motion to guard all of our nation’s kids, advance well being fairness and save lives, particularly amongst Black Individuals and different populations which were focused by the tobacco business and suffered monumental hurt from the predatory advertising of those merchandise.”

“After I dedicated to learning tobacco as a graduate pupil, it was solely for this second,” Man stated. “I discovered very early on that the tobacco business manipulated menthol merchandise to extend their addictiveness, that they focused Black, low revenue White, LGBTQ+, and younger folks to make use of these merchandise — that, if used as meant, they might doubtless die from.”

“My objective,” she stated, “was to contribute to the physique of proof that might result in the ban of menthol cigarettes and put a cease to the business preying on Black communities.”

The advertising of menthol cigarettes to Black shoppers was made simpler by redlining and housing segregation.

I grew up in a family the place menthol cigarettes have been smoked. Kool — a model that might have a jazz festival named after it — seemed to be the model of selection. The cooling impact of the menthol made the cigarettes simpler to inhale, making for a extra nice expertise.

My dad and mom managed to give up. But it surely was too late for my father, Wilbert Williams, who was identified with lung most cancers earlier than his dying three a long time in the past.

Stoking Man’s ire Thursday was the alliance between cigarettes and a few Black leaders, together with Al Sharpton, who acknowledged in an article in The New York Instances that his Nationwide Motion Community has acquired monetary assist from the tobacco business.

Sharpton, in a letter to Susan Rice, the Home Coverage Council director, wrote that the menthol ban would have “unintended penalties” and “severely goal and hurt African American people who smoke, who overwhelmingly desire menthol cigarettes.”

“A menthol ban would impose critical dangers,” Sharpton wrote, “together with rising the unlawful sale of smuggled, black market menthol cigarettes in addition to the road gross sales of particular person menthol cigarettes — ‘loosies’ and in flip place menthol people who smoke at a big danger of getting into the prison justice system.”

Sure, Eric Garner, after being accused of promoting “loosie” cigarettes, died from a chokehold by a New York Metropolis police officer in 2014. However to cynically flip this tragedy on its head is to disregard tens of 1000’s of African Individuals who die of tobacco-related deaths annually. The focusing on and hurt of Black folks by the cigarette business isn’t an unintended consequence.

The FDA ban would apply solely to producers and retailers. Because the company states: “The FDA can not and won’t implement towards particular person shopper possession or use of menthol cigarettes or any tobacco product.” And state and native legislation enforcement companies don’t independently implement the federal Meals, Drug and Cosmetics Act, the FDA said.

Or as Man advised VCU Information: “This fearmongering can not conceal the very fact that it’s the business itself that preyed on and brought on a lot hurt and dying to Black Individuals by way of the focused advertising of menthol cigarettes. This isn’t a query of criminalizing Black people who smoke; it’s a query of saving Black lives.”

Quite a few organizations have endorsed a menthol cigarette ban, together with the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus and a broad coalition of 77 public well being, medical, schooling and group organizations.

No Black activist ought to dare defend a product that has taken so many Black lives. Disregard the smoke and mirrors.