bg-announce

The US market share for menthol cigarettes sharply increased during the
1960's, but has fluctuated between 25% - 29% since 1973.
See Table 7 at:
http://www.ftc.gov/reports/tobacco/2007cigarette2004-2005.pdf 
Bill Godshall

- - -

Take Away Their Menthols? Is That Cool?

By Mireya Navarro 
The New York Times 
August 4, 2008 
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/fashion/03smoke.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&ore
f=slogin&oref=slogin

Over the last 10 years, Jamey Heath, a songwriter and producer, has
adjusted to an increasingly nonsmoking world and put up with the
indignities. 

Smokers like him have become outnumbered in the music industry. He has seen
restaurants shut down their smoking sections and cities shun him as persona
non grata, even in the open air. These days he is reduced to smoking his
Salem Lights in his car or on his front porch, in deference to his
nonsmoking wife and two children. 

But a governmental ban on menthol cigarettes? Despite his own mixed
feelings about smoking, "it feels unconstitutional," Mr. Heath said. If all
cigarettes were banned, he said, "that’s one thing, but to cut out just one
segment seems a little fishy." 

Smoking menthol cigarettes has become politically charged as Congress
considers legislation that would give the federal government the power to
regulate tobacco products for the first time. The bill, which the House of
Representatives approved last week in a bipartisan vote, and which now
awaits a Senate vote in the fall, bans clove, vanilla and other flavorings
in cigarettes. 

But the bill’s sponsors in the House decided that the Food and Drug
Administration should make the decision on how to regulate menthol, the
most common flavoring. Menthol cigarettes account for more than a quarter
of all cigarette sales and, studies and surveys show, are the preference of
the overwhelming majority of African-American smokers, as well as a
significant proportion of all teenagers ages 12 to 17. 

Those who support the ban of menthol include seven former federal
secretaries of health and human services, African-American antismoking
advocates and some Congressional Black Caucus members. Those opposing the
ban of menthol include Philip Morris USA, the nation’s largest cigarette
company; other Black Caucus members; and major public health groups, which
said a compromise was needed so as not to derail the legislation. 

In this maelstrom of debate are the smokers. There are those like Mr.
Heath, who is African-American, who reject such wholesale interference with
personal choices, and there are others who believe that having their
menthol cigarettes snatched away may be just what they need to end their
habit. 

AN entertainment executive with a major Hollywood studio who smokes
Marlboro Smooth, a newly introduced menthol, said he did not want the
government "telling me anything." 

"Are we supposed to be so stupid that we need the F.D.A. to try to protect
us from ourselves?" he said. But a ban, he continued, would be "one more
thing to help me quit when I should anyway." 

The executive, a white man who spoke on condition of anonymity because he
serves on an antismoking committee in the movie industry, said he had once
managed to stop smoking but became hooked on menthols about 10 years ago
when he was stressed out and happened to have a cold. He asked a friend for
a menthol cigarette, which he thought was a "less harsh" option. 

"I stuck with menthol," he said. "A nonmenthol seems like smoking dirt." 

Taste is a big draw to menthol cigarettes, whose mint flavor and cooling
sensation are not unlike those found in mentholated cough drops or
toothpaste. A study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention published this year found that many African-American smokers
view menthol cigarettes as "soothing" and "smooth," and less harsh and
dangerous than nonmentholated cigarettes. 

(Studies are inconclusive on whether menthol cigarettes are more, or less,
addictive and harmful than unflavored ones.) 

"For me, I think I’m addicted twice, once to the menthol and then second to
the tobacco," said one smoker in a small group discussion with black adult
smokers in the Atlanta area, which was held by the C.D.C. and summarized in
a study published this year in Ethnicity & Health, an academic journal. 

Marketing campaigns have greatly influenced consumers. Menthol cigarettes
have been heavily promoted to African-Americans since the 1960s, numerous
studies have documented. A study released this year by the Harvard School
of Public Health found that menthol cigarettes are increasingly popular
with adolescents, partly because tobacco companies have new milder brands
that facilitate "initiation." 

Of course, some smokers had their eyes wide open when they succumbed to the
habit. 

Katherine Dozier, 24, a wedding planner in Los Angeles who is white, said
she started smoking regularly about a year ago, when a Hollywood club
passed out Camel No. 9 menthols as a promotion. She was struck by the
"cute" black-and-turquoise box with a pink camel, and said the cigarettes
were obviously aimed at young women. "You just don’t see men smoking them
because they wouldn’t be caught dead with these pink and green boxes," she
said. 

Ms. Dozier liked the cigarettes, finding them "really smooth and minty and
very light," she said. "They didn’t make me cough." 

Soon she was smoking half a pack a day, also made easy, she noted, because
the packs were sold two for the price of one. She said she recently cut
back significantly, only smoking "if I’ve had a hard day at work." She is
trying to quit. 

She said she made up her mind after she caught a fellow driver in traffic
staring at her puffing away "like it was really gross." 

African-Americans have disproportionately high rates of death and disease
from smoking, and 75 percent of black smokers choose menthol cigarettes.
The House bill calls for review within one year of menthol cigarettes by a
scientific advisory committee. (The White House has threatened to veto the
bill, saying that the F.D.A. already carries a heavy workload and that the
agency’s oversight could lead the public to mistakenly conclude that some
cigarettes are safe.) 

"We experience more deaths and disease, and that alone to me should warrant
the immediate banning of menthol," said William S. Robinson, executive
director of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, which
withdrew its support of the House bill because of the menthol exemption. 

Mr. Robinson said that at a recent family reunion in Norwalk, Conn., he
rounded up a dozen or so cousins - men and women ages 30 to 50, all of whom
smoked menthols - to talk about the possible ban. Without exception, he
said, all said they would quit smoking if menthol cigarettes were not
available. "They said they couldn’t tolerate the harshness of other
products," he said. 

But it may take more than a ban - or the health warnings or the $5 pack -
to stop some smokers. Mr. Heath, the music producer, said he has tried to
quit, without success. He has tried wearing nicotine patches, and he doubts
that a menthol ban would work, either. 

"Most likely I’d continue to smoke it underground, or I’d switch to other
cigarettes," he said. 

For some smokers, menthol is the default choice. Brandal Hollingsworth, a
32-year-old security guard in Los Angeles, said he does not particularly
like menthols, but that is what he often ends up smoking. He controls his
habit by relying on his friends to give him a cigarette or two. And they
smoke menthols. Usually, he breaks the filter off the cigarettes to extract
more flavor. "A menthol is not the quality of a full-flavored cigarette,"
he explained. 

Justine Love, 54, an African-American radio personality in Washington and a
pack-a-day menthol smoker for 30 years, recently kicked the habit after
losing her father to lung cancer. She said that menthol might make smoking
more enjoyable but that the addiction to nicotine, and its psychological
hold as a crutch, as a way to cope with stress, is what explains most
smoking. 

Now an antismoking crusader, Ms. Love gives testimonials in public service
announcements on her station, WPGC-FM, but she said she does not preach. 

"This is a very personal decision, and you don’t need anybody to tell you
what you can or can’t do," she said. "I don’t say, ‘You should stop
smoking.’ I give encouragement to quit. I tell them I saved $139 in the
first month." 


.