Hacker News Reader

Comment by ketzo | Hacker News Reader

I’m extremely in favor of harm-reduction legislation in general, and I think this ban is a good idea overall. Flavors are effective at hooking young people in particular — lots of vaping research has shown that — and so get it outta here. Great.

But man, “ban menthols because Black people like them” sure feels a little weird.

Like, I get that’s not exactly what’s going on. But.. it’s a little bit what’s going on?

I guess it’s just worth watching closely any time someone talks about protecting disadvantaged groups. I think that is actually what’s happening here, but it’s suuuuch a short rhetorical jump to “well, the under classes can’t be trusted with lottery tickets!” and so on.

Edit: just to make it abundantly clear: I don't think the FDA is actually banning menthols because Black people enjoy them. But I think their reasoning isn't too far from that, and it's worth being watchful for that sort of paternalism, IMO.

View on HN

As the press release says, menthol was "the last allowable flavor".

It's not the government banning one specific flavor because it is popular with black people. It is the government first banning every flavor except the one popular with black people and now circling back to make the rules uniform.

No, the press release does specifically target black people:

> One studyExternal Link Disclaimer suggests that banning menthol cigarettes in the U.S. would lead an additional 923,000 smokers to quit, including 230,000 African Americans in the first 13 to 17 months after a ban goes into effect. An earlier studyExternal Link Disclaimer projected that about 633,000 deaths would be averted, including about 237,000 deaths averted for African Americans.

Then they go on to rationalize those positions about African Americans because that progress hasn’t been experienced by everyone equally.

I am not stating any position whether specifically targeting black people in this ban is good or bad. I am only pointing out that this group is specifically mentioned in the press release.

Yes, the press release highlights the racial disparities resulting from the previous, and blatantly racist, exclusion of menthols fron the general ban on characterizing flavors.

That’s a non sequitur.

The data suggests, as mentioned in the press release, African Americans disproportionately favor menthol flavored cigarettes. Failing to ban such previously is unfortunate but not racist and certainly not blatantly racist unless there was intent to disproportionately harm African Americans. Prior intent was not mentioned in the press release.

> Failing to ban such previously is unfortunate but not racist

No, it was very much racist.

> and certainly not blatantly racist unless there was intent to disproportionately harm African Americans.

Both that the exception would have disproportionate impact on African-Americans and that the overt logic of the flavor ban applied equally to menthol was well known when the flavor ban was adopted. Intent is the only reasonable conclusion.

I am trying to follow your logic, but its fast and loose. It sounds like you are saying the prior cigarette flavor bans occurred after the cited evidence about African Americans consuming menthol cigarettes more frequently than other Americans therefore menthol cigarettes were not banned intentionally as a weapon to harm African Americans. That is a lot of assumptions not based on anything plus a factual statement that is likely false about the timeline.

Coincidence is not racism. Inventing a story from imagined assumptions isn't helpful for people disadvantaged by actual racism.

> Then they go on to rationalize those positions about African Americans because that progress hasn’t been experienced by everyone equally

I don't see any rationalizations - here are the basic facts:

1. Menthol is the last flavor that's available for sale

2. Black people are extremely over-represented among smokers of menthol cigarettes.

Stating that banning of other flavors (except Menthol!) didn't have a proportionate effect among black smokers is not rationalization - that's just a fact. I don't know why anyone would be uncomfortable with this. The reason Menthol is being banned is not because its popular among black people (which is what gp asserted and you appear to be opposing).

I am not agreeing or opposing.

It's basically the opposite of what's going on, but simultaneously looks really similar. The article says:

> ...address health disparities experienced by communities of color, low-income populations, and LGBTQ+ individuals, all of whom are far more likely to use these tobacco products

So yes, one motivation for an action like this is that an enemy against those groups wants to deprive them of something that they use more than others.

Another motivation for the exact same action is that an ally aligned with those groups wants to remove something that harms them more than others.

Unfortunately, intent is hard to measure, and the behavior is very similar. I think one of the key differentiators is whether that removal extends only to the class being 'protected' or whether it extends to everyone. To extend your hypothetical example, if people without a high school diploma were prevented from purchasing lottery tickets, and those with college degrees (like the people passing the legislation and their peers) were allowed to buy them at a discount rate, that would indicate malicious intent and discrimination against those who are less educated. On the other hand, if you take away lotto tickets from everyone, including depriving yourself of the ability to buy them, because they're universally bad and also because they cause an unusually high degree of harm to those with less education, that looks more like benevolent motivation. Of course, if you didn't buy them in the first place then your sacrifice doesn't mean as much...

> I think one of the key differentiators is whether that removal extends only to the class being 'protected' or whether it extends to everyone.

Very, very good point. It's not the only measure, I think, but it's certainly one of the big ones.

>>On the other hand, if you take away lotto tickets from everyone, including depriving yourself of the ability to buy them, because they're universally bad and also because they cause an unusually high degree of harm to those with less education, that looks more like benevolent motivation. Of course, if you didn't buy them in the first place then your sacrifice doesn't mean as much...

This point raises a third issue: should one at all submit to the whims of the crab bucket , the benevolence of its motives notwithstanding?

I think a more accurate way of framing it is "Menthols have been targeted specifically to black people, and also, they're even more harmful than regular cigarettes". It's definitely not "let's take this away because black people like it".

That’s actually a solid point. There’s extra responsibility to prevent harm to specific groups when the harm has been targeted at them specifically.

And yeah, I know that’s not actually the message. But as I read it, “banning menthols because they disproportionately harm underrepresented groups” is not so semantically different from the other version.

I mostly think it’s an area where we should all have our eyes peeled, basically. Like I said, I’m fully in agreement with this decision. Just hits my “maybe weird?” radar.

How are menthol cigarettes more harmful than regular ones? The menthol just makes it easier to smoke more. Is that the crux of your argument?

I find the “company X is targeting [arbitrary subcategory]” argument to be totally asinine btw. Is Krispy Kreme targeting fat people by offering free donuts for people that get COVID-19 vaccines?

Lastly there is nothing more patronizing than telling a black person that you’re preventing them from buying menthol cigarettes for their own good.

Man I hate the whole “safety culture” crowd. I find it such an insufferable ideology. But then again I’m explicitly not a collectivist so that’s par for the course.

> Is Krispy Kreme targeting fat people by offering free donuts for people that get COVID-19 vaccines?

LOL are they really doing that? That's funny considering that obesity and diabetes are both risk factors for poor COVID-19 outcomes.

Welcome to the new world ;)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abc7ny.com/amp/free-food-vaccin...

You actually get a donut per day! The foundation of a healthy diet.

Yes, and blue checks on Twitter thought it was great. Meanwhile, 78% of the people hospitalized for Covid-19 are overweight or obese; https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughl...

>78% of the people hospitalized for Covid-19 are overweight or obese

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm

>Percent of adults aged 20 and over with overweight, including obesity: 73.6% (2017-2018)

Since COVID targets older people more often, this may match the adult population within these groups, as the population becomes more overweight each year and people get heavier and slightly shorter as they age.

https://jag.journalagent.com/tkd/pdfs/TKDA_37_4_234_240.pdf

From the paper:

Its cooling effect may contribute to the intensity of smoking (deeper inhalation and/or more prolonged breath holding) resulting in greater exposure to tobacco smoke toxins. The effect of menthol through increasing the permeability of cell membranes results in a greater absorption of smoked toxins [2,3] Ahijevych and Garrett[2] reported higher cotinine levels in mentholated cigarettes compared to nonmentholated cigarettes, suggesting greater nicotine absorption per cigarette. Clarke et al.[3] found that mentholated cigarette smoking was associated with higher serum cotinine and carbon monoxide levels per cigarette.

Thanks for the citation.

I should mention I oppose these bans regardless of whether menthol really is or isn’t dangerous, but interesting to know it increases cellular permeability. And seems like a good bit of increased heart/cardiac effects.

> How are menthol cigarettes more harmful than regular ones? The menthol just makes it easier to smoke more. Is that the crux of your argument?

It gives more pleasure so it hooks you on more. So yes, it’s more harmful, no? When I was smoking cigarettes back in the day, my fav was West Ice. They tasted really good and didn’t have bad aftertaste. It was easier to smoke more and smoke one only for the menthol taste.

Menthol enhances nicotine delivery by altering nicotine metabolism. Menthol also interact with nicotine nACh receptors in the brain in various ways[1].

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3720998/

When paternalistic policies are directed at particular demographics, it is kinda disturbing. I mean, sure, there's a reason. But there always is, and it makes me wonder if a line is being crossed here that will set a bad precedent.

We’re about a couple months away from being told that opposing mandatory vaccination is racist because more black people die from COVID-19.

(I mean that seriously not as a joke...although there is some natural humor in it as well)

The original harm was caused by tobacco corps targeting a particular demographic. Rectifying this wrong requires targeting that demographic, but it's not unsettling. Moreover, they have banned all the other flavors, so might as well finish the job with this one.

The entire "paternalistic" argument rests on the premise that the choice to smoke, or not, is for most people purely rational, and totally discounts the predatory nature of tobacco companies and the addiction that comes with it. Menthols are targeted at blacks, and especially black children, since the menthol flavoring makes them more pleasant to smoke. Of the 20 million American menthol smokers, 17 million of those are black. That's not by accident, it's intentional.

There are only 42 million black people in the US. Are you really saying that 40% of black Americans smoke menthols specifically? And presumably some percentage smoke something without menthol? That doesn't seem right.

You do have to be careful with your groupings. I wonder if this isn't a confusion between the number of cigarettes smoked by a particular population and the number of people from each population who smoke, or something like that.

I'm not sure where the number '20 million menthol users' keeps coming from, perhaps somewhere in the data behind [1]? Regardless, [2] and [3] suggest that somewhere around 20% of the African American population smokes tobacco in some form. Among those 20% of black Americans who smoke about 85% use menthols.

[1] https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/cbhsq-report...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/african-americans/in...

[3] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/african-americans/in...

Does the entire paternalistic argument really rest on that? What if you believe humans are rarely entirely rational and it's a spectrum (e.g. If I was addicted to heroin but trying to quit I'd probably be less rational when I really wanted a fix than if I was a pack a day smoker doing the same)?

The alternative is to assume that most people aren't rational, except for those pushing for such laws.

If one subscribes to that, why even bother with democracy at all?

Could you expand more on how menthol cigarettes are targeted towards blacks? I have lived most of my life in "black culture" and anecdotally the targeting comes from the idea of "we smoke menthol" perpetuating culturally and generationally, not through external targeting or advertising. Maybe it was, once, and it continues as a result of that initial seed? I don't know, but I do know it is not a traditionally target ad campaign or similar. For the record, I also smoke menthols, partially because of that cultural influence.

Sorry but where is the harm reduction for everyone else's race? Doesn't seem like it's a priority since the people in powerful also enjoy those vices. It's a bit coincidental that the races with less power also have the vices that they need to be protected by. My family is Mexican and they love tequila. I can guarantee you that if it was banned they'd all drink less alcohol and would be much less of a burden on our healthcare system. Somehow I'm yet to see a suggested ban of flavored Smirnoffs because it's turning our white college students into alcoholics.

I'm not going to argue for or against the ban, but tobacco companies specifically targeted african-americans to use them and the civil rights movement to defend industry policy.

Mexicans like tequila because it's made from agave which is easy to grow in the desert. Mexicans have loved tequila since before europeans even landed in mexico.

Black people couldn't possibly make their own decisions on whether they want to smoke, or what flavor of cigarettes they prefer. They need the white people running the FDA to protect them.

Yeah, I'm sympathetic to the government wanting to protect the health of folks (or if you're a cynic like me, making sure that citizens are productive for longer and don't use as many healthcare resources) but this feels super paternalistic. Why not just dramatically increase the taxes so people can still choose to pay a high price if they want to?

>Why not just dramatically increase the taxes so people can still choose to pay a high price if they want to?

If you increased the taxes enough to change behavior, that would imply that people who wanted to smoke were made unable to. If all the people who want Menthols after your tax increase can still afford them, then it would not stop them, by definition. Consequently, vice taxes are always either ineffectual, or a ban that only applies to the poor.

Yeah I mean if you increase prices 1000x it would have that effect but if you increase them closer to what a place like NZ or Aus does (I think like ~75%, it's been a while since I studied this stuff then the cost is offputting for many but it means that the societal costs aren't externalized onto nonsmokers in the form of additional healthcare burden and the like. There's lots of arguments about pigouvian taxes and whether they hurt the poor, but generally they are effective at stopping usage up to a point (as in there is strong correlation between an increase in tax and decrease in usage) and the benefits usually outweigh the costs even for the poor. Patricio Marquez from the World Bank has a bunch of great reports that break this down, often on a country by country basis. CTFK also has info but is a little paternalistic but I really like tobacconomics reports https://tobacconomics.org/

Agreed with your premise in full.

Increasing the price isn't necessarily about making it inaccessible to people so they stop smoking (though it is a minor part of it that is a nice side-effect), it is to make sure that the additional burden placed on the healthcare system by those people is balanced out by taxes paid in form of increased prices on tobacco products.

If people don't stop smoking, then might as well make sure they cover the extra cost they add to the healthcare system. Seems pretty fair.

To be clear, this statement I made has nothing to with my views on the specific menthol ban in question, as I am still not sure how I feel about it. I was just discussing the hypothetical non-existent strategy of just more taxing on tobacco products instead of outright banning them.

>it is to make sure that the additional burden placed on the healthcare system by those people is balanced out by taxes paid in form of increased prices on tobacco products.

That only makes sense in places where the taxes go to healthcare organizations. In the American system, that doesn't happen - there's no way that a city will hand the proceeds of its tobacco taxes to insurance companies.

Yeah, the point isn't to compensate insurers - they for sure get theirs and charge smokers more. It's to compensate healthcare systems and governments who foot the bill for 1) productivity decreases from smoking in the form of more sick days, more breaks, etc. and 2) people who don't have insurance and get cancer and are treated at the taxpayers expense

It's a cash grab, make no mistake about it. They can justify it all they want, but they're fooling you.

Tobacco companies already pay states a bunch of money from their 1998 settlement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...

It's over $200 billion and growing. They're more than compensated.

Cigarettes and tobacco products are already heavily taxed for the user. Both the federal government and the state government makes a lot of money off people's addiction, and it's an addiction they can't break (obviously).

https://igentax.com/cigarette-tax-state/

Time to leave smokers alone. Many if not most of them got hooked as kids and as a society we just keep punishing them for their "moral failure."

> Consequently, vice taxes are always either ineffectual, or a ban that only applies to the poor.

A 10% increase in tobacco price results in a 4% decrease in tobacco demand: https://www.who.int/tobacco/economics/taxation/en/

I don't know if that counts as "ineffectual" in your book, but its not nothing.

Hence the second half of the branch: "or a ban that applies only to the poor."

Couldn't you say the same of all luxury products?

If they're expensive because policy set the prices then yes, that would be a ban.

Because addicts are not price sensitive.

Some are. Stealing this from a post above

A 10% increase in tobacco price results in a 4% decrease in tobacco demand: https://www.who.int/tobacco/economics/taxation/en/

1. Smoking citizens are - on average - productive until retirement, but use up much less pension money. So the cynical policy would be the opposite.

2. When you increase taxes you get smuggling and illegal dealing with all the violence it brings.

1. I'm skeptical as the age of retirement keeps going up. Have a source? 2. Agreed that's an issue in contexts with low rule of law but I think that's less of an issue here than say Ukraine/Russia/DRC where there is serious smuggling

So does life expectancy. You retire later, but in total amount of years retired per person? Probably even more today still? I don't think "standard retirement age" tracks perfectly with life expectancy.

Also consider. The life expectancy of a 60 year old is above average. At age 60 you have already "survived" quite a lot of danger (adolescent drug abuse, driving accidents while young, opportunity to be a soldier in a war, crimes of passion in your twenties, mid life crisis, et cetera). So the life expectancy of a 60 year old is above the "average life expectancy", as many die before ever reaching that age.

Isn't economics fun?

My argument is too simple to need sources:

Assume that, on average, smokers die at 75, non smokers die at 80, and everyone gets social security pensions at 65.

Then smokers pensions only cost 67% of non smokers pension, even though they pay in 100% as much.

My numbers are surely wrong, but all that matters is that smokers die earlier than non smokers.

This is also the hard to realize way Social Security redistributes from the poor and unhealthy to the well off and healthy.

Doesn't banning something also give you smuggling and illegal dealing? Like currently all drugs and back when alcohol was illegal?

It does. You can think of a ban as an infinite tax.

Afaik smokers and alcoholics are a blessing for most states. What is additionally spent on them due to healthcare costs is far less than the taxes they pay + the retirement payments they don't receive due to premature death.

Funny clip from Yes, Prime Minister https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWxukctTlsY

I think choice is good, and taxing appropriately a good measure. Not sure about today's health and safety obsession in general. Wonder if in today's world (hypothetically given the same technological means as back then) we would ever try something like a lunar landing. And one wonders what we will forbid in 20, 30 or 40 years. Prohibition again? All those "poor people, suffering from alcoholism, disproportionately those who can't afford therapies (esp with regards to long term alcoholism), people on the fringes of society, who we must help, and who can't be trusted to make their own choices, because _we_ know better"?

Ha, I've seen that clip and really enjoyed it. I also am pretty sure I saw some research that says that's not true but I've just been searching the last few mins and can't find it. I have a bunch of files from when I was working in the field that I really need to sort through.

But yeah, I also am concerned about how safety driven we are for things and unwilling to take risks as a culture but that might be recency bias because I'm reading "Where is my flying car?" and they basically make the same point about the regulatory state stymieing innovation in the name of safety (often for absurd things like nuclear)

It's really difficult to come up with good statistics, because of the number of things one can factor in. Tobacco industry in-country producing, or it's imported for example (total cost of cigarette smoking)? How many jobs directly, how many secondary (marketing, product chain, the news stand which sells them). How to factor in second-hand smoking exactly? Are smokers more likely to consume other drugs, if so, why? Because they have a tendency to try, or smoking causes them to try? How do you factor in that? How do you even "measure" that?

With alcohol: how to factor in violence due to alcohol? How much less police incidents Friday / Saturday evening due to less alcohol? But what about people maybe going out less than before, or spending less money when doing so (will they pay the same prize for drinks if there's no alcohol involved)? What about sports betting and gambling industry (where it's legal)? How will it affect illegal drug use (we've been through that, but it's been long enough for people to say "well, it was different than").

Even the death statistic is tough to do. "Pre-mature death due to smoking", maybe the person also was overweight and had diabetes, how do you estimate how long this person would have lived, if they didn't smoke?

In every step of the way is the possibility for variance. Social sciences, from sociology, to psychology, to health, is such a minefield. Medicine of course is half and half. You can do a lot of stuff on the level of biology, chemistry, hard science in a lab, but health benefits/damages are "observed" in practice (observational studies). And the number of problems there are just ... huge.

I could go on and on and on...

Oh, you can bet your ass that prohibition of alcohol again is coming far sooner than 20-40 years from now. Newsflash, everybody dies! The government should have no rights to infringe on what people want to consume. This is a slippery slope. I am not pro-cigarette here but pro choice of drug consumption. That, and the distinguishing of cigars and pipe tobaccos from that of what a cigarette really is, which is not natural tobacco. Cigarettes are 50% "mother's liquor," which is ground up floor scrap and stem tobacco parts into a nice little puree with added re-uptake nicotine boosting agents. This is then dried into sheets and chopped up to look like ribbons of tobacco. It is not smoking tobacco naturally. Leave the natural cigars and pipe tobaccos in another category. The FDA is going to target all tobacco cleverly as if it's all the same when they know very well that it is not.

You think all these Addy popping, Vyvanse downing, benzo-calming programmers aren't dying way earlier? You are fooling yourselves so hard.

You can make the opposite point with the same logic though: "the powerful, dangerous tobacco industry was given a loophole in the flavored cigarette ban allowing them to prey disproportionately on vulnerable Black populations."

Probably important to note that this was being pushed for by a lot of Black health organizations: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/16/civil-right...

I heard a former tobacco marketer say once that the only thing that sells cigarettes is a sign that says "OPEN."

A more effective harm reduction strategy would be to make the things more expensive and inconvenient to purchase. But that's a harder sell than banning flavored tobacco products.

Meanwhile, alcohol comes in numerous pleasant and sweet varieties and you can buy cookies with enough THC to knock out an elephant. It's a bit of a double standard to go after tobacco products, even if they have fewer redeeming qualities and low potential for responsible use.

> But man, “ban menthols because Black people like them” sure feels a little weird.

> Like, I get that’s not exactly what’s going on. But.. it’s a little bit what’s going on?

Like other flavors have been, they are banned because of the youth impact.

The racial skew, and whose youth regulators previously were and weren’t concerned about, is why menthols were previously excluded from the flavor ban, but its kind of weird to call out eliminating the racially-motivated discrepancy as a problem.

I don’t buy into the ban having racist roots but I am concerned about the result of the ban increasing race problems. There was a famous case in the past few years of a big black guy being killed during a police interaction and the underlying reason for the interaction was that he was selling loose cigarettes on the street.

Prohibition and the failed drug war have shown us that making something illegal won’t stop demand or supply. So now a bunch of black people who are physically hooked on a specific product are going to have it taken away (I smoked, it was a nightmare fight to quit) and for sure people are going to start selling bootleg product (unless menthol can’t be bootlegged, I know nothing about the creation of this product) and most of them will be black since most of the menthol demand is in black communities.

Unless the police don’t intend to try and stop this we would expect it to increase the amount of police interactions and then naturally increase the number of violent interactions leading to death.

Eric Garner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Eric_Garner

>unless menthols can't be duplicated

A drop of mint flavoring from the baking aisle at the nearest store on the filter, and a few drops on the unflavored pipe tobacco. It ain't the same, but nobody's gonna complain when the alternative is raw.

Flavors aren't effective at hooking young people, nicotine is. Nobody smokes because it tastes good, menthol or not. This is just another ban that makes some people feel good about themselves while pissing off the rest. I lean pretty far left, but this is the kind of meaningless ban that makes people hate Democrats.

>Nobody smokes because it tastes good, menthol or not.

I was just talking with some online friends yesterday who smoke and say they would never have started if it weren't for menthols, so I think you're wrong about this.

Yes but most cigarettes are not menthols. And a good portion of the people I know who smoke hate menthols... so there's that anecdote. I only know one person who smokes menthols, and the rest just smoke regular cigarettes and did not start by smoking menthols.

It might not be what gets the majority of people, but clearly it gets some, and the parent said "nobody."

I will also note that my friends started when they were teens and no longer smoke menthols.

Part of the argument for this is that Menthol actually makes it less harsh on your throat, so it's easier for new smokers to start with Menthols.

> Flavors aren't effective at hooking young people, nicotine is.

Wrong. Flavors are simply really effective at hooking everybody.

I watched this with a friend of mine who absolutely thought the same way as you. We got him a couple different flavored ones to try--all non-nicotine.

His reaction: "Alright, you win. You have to physically take the strawberry ones away as I will absolutely drain them all."

The flavors allow the industry to find the one that you personally find agreeable. Add nicotine on top of that and you have a device for personalized maximal addiction.

Given that the entire modern tech business is addiction as a service, I don't think we have any room for moral grandstanding.

Remember when Internet addiction was a big concern?

> Given that the entire modern tech business is addiction as a service

That is grossly unfair to the many of us who have absolutely nothing to do with the latest Social-Garbage-As-A-Service fads.

Just because VCs will only fund Internet Junk Food does not mean that all software that exists does that.

I commend you for your integrity. However the exceptions are a rounding error in terms of market cap, because today's tech industry is all about creating addicts and profiting from their addiction directly or selling access to them to a third party. Sometimes both. It's not a coincidence that we're one of only two industries that refers to customers as users.

While its probably hard to disagree about market cap, there are a lot of people writing software that backs your laptop/desktop, runs your bank, plans logistics delivery routes, runs medical equipment, etc.

There is a lot of software out there that isn't dedicated to triggering human dopamine receptors. You don't hear a lot about it as it's just part of the job.

And I didn't choose to have integrity--it's just that nobody ever offered me enough money to compromise it. :)

Harm reduction? Why not ban alcohol? Why not cap cars at 55mph? People have lost money in the stock market, so I assume you'd like that banned as well. What is your limiting principle?

I mean, the short answer is risk vs. reward. Smoking is insanely bad for you, very addictive, and the benefits are, uh, marginal.

To walk down your list:

- Alcohol can be safely consumed in moderation, and is less prone to addiction. This comes the closest, though.

- Cars have lots of places where they can be safely operated above that speed, and fast travel has lots of benefits.

- The potential benefits of the stock market are fairly obvious. The risks are extremely, immediately obvious, including to the person doing the money-losing.

> Alcohol can be safely consumed in moderation, and is less prone to addiction.

Tobacco can be consumed in moderation. I'll smoke a Wood Tip Wine Black and Mild about once a month, and my pipe on an occasional beautiful day.

The benefits are the extreme joy it brings me. It's one of my favorite things in life, and they're going to take it away.

Nicotine is amazingly pleasant and performance boosting unlike alternatives.

A good read:

https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

All of these things are okay in moderation and have some driving principle that weighs cost versus benefit. Same with cigarettes. Hugely harmful with a long tail of harmfulness and external effects on society with little or no gain. Seems like a good risk analysis to me in this case.

This ban also includes flavored cigars, which most users only smoke occasionally. But even so, why is society bothered with someone's individual choice to smoke a menthol cigarette away from others? I don't see the "external effects" you're alluding to, so it feels like the "long tail" is small in magnitude.

If I have to take a guess, you might be thinking of healthcare costs and having to subsidize smokers. But if that's a concern, I feel we should avoid universal healthcare proposals (like Medicare for All) and instead let people choose what insurance coverage they want from private companies, from a menu of choices, so that they pay for what the coverage they want based on who they are and the habits they have. I suggest this path because everyone has a different idea about what they want covered. Some may not want to subsidize smokers, some may not want to subsidize abortions, some may not want to subsidize healthcare for the obese, some may not want to subsidize puberty blockers for children, and so on.

Ultimately, all of this is leading us back to what I feel the US got right in the past - favoring choice, control, and responsibility at the individual level instead of increased government size, regulation, and paternalism.

Do I need to rush out and stock up on Swisher Sweets? (Cherry-flavored cigars.)

This is kind of a serious question. I haven't smoked one in twenty years, but now I have an intense craving.

I don't understand all the downvotes to this. Any harm reduction initiative is by nature paternalistic and somewhat arbitrary.

In most societies, a "vice" is a just a habit that the upper middle class disapproves of. In the 1950's, the upper middle class enjoyed smoking cigarettes so that was fine and dandy, but marijuana was the devil. Today, the upper middle class loves marijuana and finds cigarettes distasteful, so we have smoking bans alongside marijuana legalization.

Excatly. I get the feeling the same group of people in favor of this ban is heavily overlapping with the large population segment that wants legal marijuana? Like, its gotta be all or nothing here, you want this stuff legal, or not? Otherwise your gonna get contraband, perverse incentives, and very likely excessively harsh punishment on petty drug crimes....

> But man, “ban menthols because Black people like them” sure feels a little weird.

Because it's patronizing and soft bigotry of low expectations - something most of these policies either are ignorant towards or is the exact intention. It's a fact that menthol cigarettes attract youth. It's also a fact that "On average, African Americans initiate smoking at a later age compared to Whites." and "African Americans smoke fewer cigarettes per day":

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/african-americans/in...

So most adult blacks are making conscious decisions themselves to start smoking when they are adults. And since 86% of blacks and 46% of hispanics prefer menthol cigarettes over regular ones, the adults enjoy that flavour. But this ban is patronizing them as if the adult blacks are too stupid to think for themselves, so the politicians must treat them as they treat kids and make the decisions to take away bad things from them.

https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/products-ingredients-co...

Instead of making changes so that youth can't get a hand on it, they are banning it because according to their own set standards, somehow adult blacks and hispanics are unable to think for themselves.

Anecdotal but when I immigrated, it was the patronizing comments and policies which I found the most "offensive". It's like being treated as kids instead of grown adults who can make decisions and achieve great things on my own.

Also this ban will result in the same consequences as the "war on drugs" and weed bans. Intentionally or unintentionally, it will end up locking more blacks just like it happened in 1980s and 1990s.

Saying this as someone who's neither touched a cigarette in my entire life, nor do I like the smell of it or weed. But I find any such overreach by the federal government to be useless with bad consequences. Better solutions would be to legalize weed, menthol cigarettes etc and put efforts towards stopping youth from getting their hands on them.

What's weird is the way the government decides to deliver these messages.

Why do government responses have to be framed as "arm over your shoulder" do-gooder decisions rather than evidence-based decisions when there's already lots of data?

IDK, maybe the "think of the children!" line and knee-deep assumptions of helping disadvantaged groups is all that's needed to stir government policy vs analyzing perspectives from a scientific approach.

I mean, it's still good overall, and it's a net benefit to reduce long-term smoking.

We can trace this paternalistic pattern towards blacks: https://streamable.com/1v4dmm

Well, that's the same Libertarian argument whether black people are involved or not. Every vice is something that people like. That's what the concept of a vice means, as opposed to diseases, crimes, or tragedies. The "is it paternalistic to change other people's willful behavior" question is one that has dogged every prohibition debate since time immemorial.

I mean who cares? There is approximately 0% black people in my country. When menthols got banned some people who liked them got annoyed.

Just don't let the crazies make everything about race. About all policies are going affect some demographics more than other.

Banning menthol cigarettes is an easy choice if you accept some paternalistic policies. Big win for little cost.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com