FDA advisory group called the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee has asked the Administration to bar the sale of menthol cigarettes as a danger to human health. The reason? They are too popular. I do not smoke and I do not like smoking. However, I find it increasingly bizarre to ban products because people like them too much. If the Administration wants to seek a prohibition of tobacco, there are good faith reasons to do so. However, most Americans continue to believe that adults have a right to choose to smoke. If tobacco is legal, I do not see why citizens should be barred from buying the type of tobacco that they prefer.
The Committee insists that menthol-flavored cigarettes are too popular with children and African Americans. Much of the recommendation focuses on adults who are African-American, Hispanic as well as other ethnic and racial minorities. However, the Committee does not find any greater health risk of the product itself. Rather, they are so popular that they are likely to increase smoking: “The availability of menthol cigarettes leads to an increase in the number of cigarette smokers and the burden of premature mortality.”
The message seems to be: you can sell tobacco products unless they are too popular with consumers.
Unless there is some added health risk associated with menthol-flavoring, I have serious reservations about telling my neighbors that they cannot buy these cigarettes . . . as long as they do not smoke them in my house.
Source: Chart found on Reddit
Jonathan Turley
i smoked my last one in march of 98 when hospitalized for pneumonia. the er doc said the emphysema was excerbating the pneumonia. i said “what emphysema, i’m only 37”.
the half a cig i smoked on the way to the er was the last one i’ve ever smoked, and eniobob i’ve dreamed of smoking (and drinking, dropped that in aug. of 01) so many times but it’s just a dream and i’m still waking up so i don’t worry about it.
when i went through my nicotine withdrawals sitting in a hospital bed with nothing else to do is when i came up with this one
stop selling cigerettes, anybody who’s over 18 and is addicted can get them free for life. no one under 18 can buy them, take them out of stores completely. sales to anyone born before the cuttoff date, probation first offense, prison time on the second.
nicotine is more addictive than heroin, crack cocaine or meth and should be treated as such.
my rant for the week
marie 1, March 21, 2011 at 9:35 pm
First they outlawed the chocolate chip cookie dough flavored cigars. And now this.
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ooooooooooooh Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
First they outlawed the chocolate chip cookie dough flavored cigars. And now this.
like Woosty said – the problem is that the menthol helps surpress the otherwise potential irritation of smoke in the lungs. I think this falls in the same category of evil as caffeinated alcoholic drinks… because of the caffeine counteracting the alcohol in terms of tiredness, you drink more alcohol than you would otherwise. Those pre-mixed things are banned from sale in stores. (you can still get a red bull and vodka at any bar though – you just can’t have it pre-made for you in convenient can form).
Menthol was exempted from the ban on sale of flavored tobacco (like cherry, grape, etc) that were banned due to supposed draw for kids and for making tasty treats out of poisonous stuff. I agree there are a lot of poisonous things we ingest, but why exempt menthol? The reason was because it is the most popular “flavor”, and the law-passers didn’t want to make large groups angry with them, despite the fact that the exception defeated the purpose of the ban.
What culheath said.
And AY? I have found no correlation between users of the herb superb and menthol cigarettes although when I first started smoking cigarettes I first smoked menthols for two very practical reasons: 1) they covered the weed smell better and 2) they kept my friends from bumming my cigarettes.
Human beings are always striving to make the other guy better. They consistently disallow him more than they allow, yet he never seems to improve. It has been a subtle joke for centuries.
“….I know you understand that the problem isn’t in making the rule or regulation, it’s in the fair application of same…..” Mike Spindell
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oh I know, and it is what it is, but I am not immune to the occasional tantrum born of frustration and the more than my share of reality!
Illinois passed a no smoking statute in public places and I couldn’t be happier. If you want to smell up your own car or home, have at it. But I don’t want to have sit at a restaurant and have to smell someone else’s smoke. They even banned smoking in Ireland’s pubs!
“it really just makes them blind to the damage they are causing”
Woosty,
That’s true, but until a viable cure for both mental health issues and addiction comes along and it hasn’t, our only option is to grin and bear it. Knowing your writing, I know you understand that the problem isn’t in making the rule or regulation, it’s in the fair application of same. Many would look at what we all write here and think “There ought to be a law……….”
Eniobob,
NY’er, born and raised, even if I’m now living in southern climes. I go back often to visit my kids/grandkids. Also as a retired NYC employee I’m kept up to date via former union’s newsletter. It annoys me every time I hear praise for Mike B. His buying his office s itself a statement on what’s wrong with the country today. His popularity stems from his providing services for his elite peers and is reflected by a bought and payed for media.
“Such rules are unheard of in America and are amongst the toughest in the world, although many countries including the UK have bans on smoking in indoor public places.”
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I want so much to agree with you….everything you are saying about the taxation and shifting of burden…it is another dependancy to exploit, another back to crawl on for a free ride…..but damn, I’m so sick of a landscape littered with the stinky refuse not to mention trying to deal with people so used to numbing themselves with booze or butts or burgers or worse….do you know what it is like to talk to people whose ability to listen is frozen by addiction? They delude themselves thinking it protects them from listening to their own pain….it really just makes them blind to the damage they are causing….
I’ll add this too:
New York has extended its ban on smoking to include parks and beaches, giving it some of the strictest rules on lighting up in the world.
Residents and tourists alike face fines up fines up to $100 (£62) if they smoke in any of the city’s 1,700 parks – including Central Park – and along its 14 miles of coastline.
The ban also covers public plazas such as Times Square.
Such rules are unheard of in America and are amongst the toughest in the world, although many countries including the UK have bans on smoking in indoor public places.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353091/New-York-smoking-ban-spreads-Central-Park-public-places.html#ixzz1HGU1WeGq
Mike S.
Your comment sounds as if you were at 42nd st and Broadway surveying the landscape at this very moment and it is spot on.
Blouise,
Thank you. Let me add just one particular about the anti politicians that non New Yorkers might not be aware of. Mikey Bloomberg has been a leader in the ban smoking movement in NYC and is even trying to ban it outdoors. Outside NYC people seem to think well of this mayor, who spent over a hundred million$ getting elected. Just as many who thought of Rudy G.’s being America’s Mayor, Bloomberg receives the same favorable press. In reality he is a creature of the wealthy elite he now is among. He has turned Manhattan into the wealthy’s Disneyland, with 600 square foot condo’s selling for a million or more. His policies hurt the poor and he is anti-labor to boot. Yet he earned kudos for raising the price of cigarettes to $8 per pack and “cleaning”
up Manhattan, which was really a form “ethnic (working people and the poor) cleansing” to make it safe for his rich peers to frolic.
“As for making it illegal, we all know how those things turn out.
Personally, as I have demonstrated, I’m well aware of the evils of smoking, however, the solutions offered by politicians and practitioners thus far don’t work and are unjust.” (Mike Spindell)
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Well said
Swarthmore mom
1, March 21, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Thank you,Blouise. My daughter is working in New Orleans for part of the summer. We could meet there and have some shrimp and grits.
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Yes … and jazz! I was last there the summer before Katrina.
I’ll bring my daughter. (Tell AY it’s ok to share with just you.) She just accepted a huge promotion and will need a “relaxing” trip in a few months.
P.S. If what she and her friends are experiencing is any indication … the economy is definitely improving.
Many people here know I’ve had a heart transplant. However, I’ve never really discussed the factors, other than genetic, that led me to need one. In my opinion and as a professional who has run addiction programs it is perhaps the worst and most pernicious addiction to quit.
I started smoking at age 13. Both my parents and older brother smoked. This was prior to the initial Surgeon General’s report that linked smoking to many illnesses. My father even taught me to inhale, when he saw me puffing and said “I looked like a girl smoking.” My parents were dead by the time I was 18, from heart problems, they were both 54. By the time I was 21 I smoked 3 1/2 packs per day.
I was rejected from Viet Nam service due to high blood pressure and yet continued to smoke. I quit “cold turkey” from 1971 to 1975 because while on LSD I realized I used smoking to distance myself from people. I began again in mid ’75 when my previous marriage deteriorated and continued until 1982, when I had my first heart attack(MI). I quit again for 2 years until I began working in Child Welfare as a supervisor and the stress became too much for me. After my 2nd and 3rd MI’s I quit again briefly both times, but went back though “limiting” myself to a pack a day. Finally, in 2005 I developed Congestive Heart Failure and stopped cold. The truth was at that point I literally couldn’t smoke without dire effects, so quitting was easy. I must emphasize that even in being a complete hippie in the 60’s and 70’s, ingesting nearly every popular drug, at least once, I was never addicted to any. I’ve always too been a light drinker too.
My point is the grip of the cigarette addiction is compelling and terrible to recover from. I can say this as someone who knows something about the subject. Having said this I find myself agreeing with Culheath:
“Anti-smoking crusades don’t have to have a rational reason for something like this, anti-tobacco has simply become evangelical in nature. I find the aiming at removing menthol cigarettes just stupid and racist to boot. Either make tobacco illegal or stfu.”
These crusades, via taxation, or lack of same as in the case of the New Hampshire Thread are both racist and “classist”. The high taxation part falls on those least able to pay and yet who are compelled by this addiction. The anti-menthol is directed at many black people. Taxation, as with liquor, is one way of not raising taxes on the wealthy and placing the burden on those least able to accept it.
As for making it illegal, we all know how those things turn out.
Personally, as I have demonstrated, I’m well aware of the evils of smoking, however, the solutions offered by politicians and practitioners thus far don’t work and are unjust.
I will find it! I’m on a mission!
Thank you,Blouise. My daughter is working in New Orleans for part of the summer. We could meet there and have some shrimp and grits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Coke