The FDA is proposing a ban on menthol cigarettes
npr.org
npr.org
We could probably just charge tobacco companies the full future medical expenses (including pain, suffering and years of life lost) of any minors that smoke menthol cigarettes when there was advertising or product availability in that child's area.
We have good historical/statistical data for these costs so as a starting point we could charge the tobacco companies up front based off the known stats and put it into a medical fund instead of having to survey individual children.
Why?
Because children aren't responsible for being idiots with poor executive function.
and
Parents who lock their children up to fully protect their kids from the outside world are bad parents (right?)
If parents are solely responsible (the children can't be) than we might as well start sending parents to jail when their kids look at pornography and skip to the point where all parents are in jail or fined into poverty.
Children push boundaries, any industry that manufacturers, targets and profits off of exploiting the nature and developmental stages of children with purely recreational addictive carcinogens should pay the full externalized cost.
Part of respecting children is knowing that they can be extremely smart and their ideas have just as much validity as any adults but their ability to calculate and process the implications of risk is under developed.
That way everyone is treated like an adult who is an adult (companies are run by large groups of adults who know what eggs they are cracking to make their omelet, certainly they do in this case), no nannie state intervention, and importantly, no unpayed externalized costs for our larger society to pay while a small portion of other adults profit.
Also, holding companies liable for illegal usage of their products is a constraint on growth.
Why not charge the store that illegal sold the children the Menthol cigarettes?
Why not ask the children what ads they say with cigarettes in them and charge the marketing agency?
Why? People always put this out there as a universal moral virtue but I just don't see it that way. The ideology of individual responsibility for all negative consequences has led us to horrific places. It's useful and necessary sometimes but not always, and I don't think here.
> Also, holding companies liable for illegal usage of their products is a constraint on growth.
Who fucking cares? Again, growth in itself is not a virtue we need to cultivate for its own sake. Growth of what, and for what ends? Growth is a tool we can use, so what are we using it for in this case. And do we even want to be?
Starving people across the world. As the pie grows everyone gets a slice. Now the pie needs to be better divided across the globe, I agree.
> Why?
Inalienable rights are a cornerstone of this country. I think this should include what we ingest. Now, we're not exempt from the consequences of what we ingest. I can def understand situations where the collective has a higher responsibility, but I don't think smoking flavored tobacco is one of them.
Edit: To the person below me, it is ludicrous that healthy people subsidize non-healthy people's healthcare when they choose to smoke.
Should we do the same for people who consume alcohol? What about people who aren't fit, overweight? What about excessive sport, bad posture, eating lots of red meat, sugar or fat, or do or consume [INSERT LIST OF UNHEALTHY THINGS]
Someone may call this a slippery-slope argument, but I'd disagree. If the argument is that people should pay for their own reckless, unhealthy or dangerous behaviour, I don't understand why we would only apply this to smoking.
Lots of things we do as humans are unhealthy and unnecessary, I really don't understand the focus on smoking.
PS: I am not and never was a smoker.
I agree, and don't think it's a slippery slope. I see nothing wrong with health insurance premiums being partially determined by life choices. Life insurance often already does this to some degree. Car insurance does this all the time based on the choices a person has made (choice of car, choice to speed, drive drunk, or otherwise engage in riskier behavior)
The fact that people might argue over where to draw the line is never, by itself, justification for not drawing a line at all. Smoking & alcohol at least are areas with enough research to quantify costs a bit more. Excessive sport is murkier: Are risks of injury offset by an overall healthier body?
Food is more difficult. There are a lot of socioeconomic issues surrounding access & affordability to healthy foods that mean the issue isn't purely one of choice.
Wow, this is a great quote. I'm using this in the future.
This is probably different from person to person, based on their ideology or world-view. Because I don't think that we should be treated differently based on our choices. For me insurances are an act of solidarity - We all pay, and if someone needs money, they receive it. Of course that excludes fraud, but I think you know what I mean. But I respect your view, I understand why people would want premiums to be individual. It's just not my style.
> socioeconomic issues surrounding access & affordability to healthy foods
That's true, yes. Socioeconomic standings can however also influence other factors we have mentioned, though admittedly not so much as food. But one example I have in mind is drug use - Technically opiates and other hard drugs are very dangerous and harmful, and I think we're both aware how much socioeconomic factors influences consumption of such substances.
I have to agree with the other commenter, this sentence is very quotable: "The fact that people might argue over where to draw the line is never, by itself, justification for not drawing a line at all." Good insight, thanks. Will keep this in mind the next time I think about potential lines.
Every ideological group will salivate at the idea of controlling what you can and can't do with your body if the result could be higher medical expenses that need to be paid for by the community.
Strict individual responsibility had been the rule for cigarette smoking before and it was not successful.
Market growth is not so important.
We'll see if markets crash around the globe the famine that emerges.
Market health is important, fixation on growth is in my opinion a big cause for lots of issues we face globally. Everything is built in a way where it constantly has to grow in order to work. But everything we have and do cannot be done or had endlessly, everything has its limits. Our markets don't exist in a vacuum, growing means to take space away from other things or beings.
Constant growth is not possible and things which are focused on it are bound to fail or turn ugly.
What's a better way to do it?
People who know what the Club of Rome discusses might be able to chime in, but 2052[1](not affiliated) largely shaped my opinion about this topic. Can't put it into perfect guidelines, but I would wish for a system which is dicated based on how happy it makes its people and on how sustainable it is.
Otherwise, if we still stay focused on growth, I don't see how we should handle climate change and other global issues. Because exactly this desire to always grow and expand seems to be the common factor behind a lot of these issues. Continue growing and buying Co2-certificates is not what's going to save us, we have to rethink our western, first-world way of living and maybe turn down our luxuries a bit.
In my opinion, expanding wealth gaps are a big issue as well. People who have the means to just ignore climate change and other things by spending money will never care, at the same time the same people are exactly the ones using the most resources.
As you can see, I'm more rambling than really answering your question, but we can gladly continue discussing this topic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2052:_A_Global_Forecast_for_th...
Market growth for tobacco products is not important, full stop.
Should we hold government officials in contempt of society when they build roads that people die on? Should we hold generals as murderers when a mission fails?
Is it better to save 1000 lives by regulating something than saving 10000 lives over the long run with new technology?
It's much harder to quantify the negative impacts of regulations in terms of medicines never developed, healthcare never delivered, food innovation never discovered, etc.
This is done already in the form of large fines and revoked licenses.
Otherwise: Assuming the companies would just pass on the cost by raising prices, this is making people accept personal responsibility. A direct tax on cigarettes would be a different way of doing it.
I wouldn't limit this to estimated costs for illegal smoking. Make everyone pay more for cigarettes to cover their actual costs-- costs currently payed by society in general. Right now the increase in medical costs is subsidized by non-smokers.
Or do the same for all smokers. Back of the envelope, it looks like about $370B in medical expenses & lost economic output per year, with about 20B packs of cigarettes sold (US), so that's about $19/pack of cigarettes.
Then put that money into a trust to cover expenses for smokers so that they don't burden non-smokers in either tax dollars or increased insurance premiums. You'll need some money to administer the process too, so let's say another $2/pack for that. Call it the "True Cost Smoking Tax".
Right now, smokers die earlier. In theory, despite the treatments for lung cancer, the earlier death means that overall it is cheaper to the “system.” A person dying under 65 means no social security payouts, etc.
Yes, Prime Minister noted that cigarette related deaths saved the country significant amounts overall.
Also our “system” is overburdened now, so the savings there would probably not be refunded.
If you can default on a loan, you force loan writers to only provide payable loans. $200k loan for an English major? Low chance for a good enough job to pay it back. Comp Sci major at state school who had a 2.0 in high school? High chance of drop out, low chance of payback.
We should just give loan companies the kick they need to stop writing bad loans just because it’s protected. Let the free market do it’s thing.
I think the same argument applies to cigarettes. Require those companies to underwrite medical care for cigarette related illness, but let people make any decisions they want. Build the externalities into the product price. Doing this would raise cost of cigarettes since you’d essentially have to self-insure with every pack.
On the other hand, it could also be a good thing since it would push more people towards the trades, which we sorely need. And maybe it would provide downward pressure on the cost of an education.
Anecdotally, this aligns with my own experience. At the age of 13 or so, the first cigarettes I smoked were menthol, because the other ones were simply too gross. Luckily I never started smoking proper, but I can definitely see the danger.
Edit: Note that I'm not trying to relativize the situation in the US by saying "the EU did it too". I'm just providing an additional data point.
Edit 2: I'm curious though, as to why people would not simply start smoking "normal" cigarettes if menthol ones were banned. Could someone elaborate on this? Are menthol cigarettes just _really_ popular in communities of color in the US? Here in Germany, I rarely saw anyone above the age of 25 ever smoking them at all.
[1]: https://www.bfr.bund.de/de/presseinformation/2020/19/aus_fue...
The world needs to come to a decision of the side-effects of cigarettes are something we're willing to accept. We've already made that decision on alcohol, though arguably its effects are more closely tied to the moment of consumption.
This is by design. The tobacco industry researched the matter themselves years ago, found the level of menthol that teenagers prefer the most, and adjusted their product formulations accordingly.
> I'm curious though, as to why people would not simply start smoking "normal" cigarettes if menthol ones were banned.
Kids who start 'experimentally' smoking are more likely to stick with it (subsequently developing an addiction) if they smoke menthol cigarettes, specifically because the anesthetic and analgesic effects of menthol make the experience less unpleasant for them. The tobacco industry figured this out and specifically reformulated their cigarettes to optimize for this. They are murderers.
In addition to condescending assumptions, the FDA is displaying remarkable shortsightedness regarding the practical impact of its policy on the community it supposedly is trying to help. "Policies that amount to prohibition for adults will have serious racial justice implications," the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Drug Policy Alliance, the Sentencing Project, and 24 other organizations warned in an April 2021 letter to Becerra and Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock. "Such a ban will trigger criminal penalties, which will disproportionately impact people of color, as well as prioritize criminalization over public health and harm reduction. A ban will also lead to unconstitutional policing and other negative interactions with local law enforcement."
The ACLU letter noted that "a menthol cigarette ban would disproportionately impact communities of color, result in criminalization of the market, and exacerbate mass incarceration." The ban "also risks creating large underground, illegal markets." That "would be a massive law enforcement problem for states, counties, and cities, since all states treat unlicensed sale of tobacco products as a crime—usually as a felony punishable by imprisonment."
The ONLY redeeming feature of such policy is that the people who dutifully report each and every cent of income are hit harder than the people who take the "I'll report what they know about" approach and most of the people who support these policies tend to be in the former group and that's pretty paltry as far as silver linings go.
Why does the government get the privilege of also being financially ruinous to those who are otherwise financially stable?
The whole point of money is to be able to make problems go away with minimal effort. Government scrutiny is just one type of problem. It's a leaking water heater with a badge and a gun.
(1) Minor transgressions shouldn't be ruinous for anyone including the poor, that's part of the point of scaled penalties.
(2) Ideally, the point would be your quality of life when you are not being punished for crimes, not the ability to be effectively immune to meaningful punishment for crimes that would ruin others.
So then why do scaled penalties only ever seem to be scaled up with income rather then down with lack of?
Legislators seem happy to create fines that are meaningful if not excessive to everyone with a household income short of two well paid white collar professionals (who themselves are a small minority).
The people who are on top of the current system are the last people who want to unbalance, damage it or otherwise rock the boat.
The two are equivalent, and many scaled fine systems have lower fines for equivalent severity offenses at low income levels than are common in the systems of fixed fines used in the US.
A lot of people get fixated on, e.g., Norway's very high, even at low income levels, traffic fines compared to the US, but that's a product of Norway being a high outlier in how severe traffic violations are considered (and, also, the US being a low outlier.)
Ban the production and importation of the product, but don't ban anything else. It's much easier to shut down a factory producing them than trying to police every single person caught riding smooth and dirty with some old camels.
Adults of any color are allowed to partake in self-destructive habits.
Which is precisely why menthol cigarettes should be banned. The idea that black kids don't count for this consideration is homicidal insanity.
"National survey data showed that significantly more adolescents and young adults than older persons smoked menthol cigarettes. In 2006, 43.8% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 40.6, 47.0) of current smokers aged 12 to 17 years reported that they used menthol cigarettes, as did 35.6% (95% CI = 34.0%, 37.2%) of current smokers aged 18 to 24 years. By contrast, 30.6% (95% CI = 28.6%, 32.6%) of smokers older than 35 years reported menthol use."
'Tobacco Industry Control of Menthol in Cigarettes and Targeting of Adolescents and Young Adults' https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2007.1255...
framing the issue as menthol cigarettes killing black kids is a really infantilizing view of black people. black people are just as capable as anyone else of free will and the ability to make their own life choices. it just so happens that menthol cigarettes are popular among black Americans. would you frame chewing tobacco as "killing rural white kids" in the same way?
you could alternatively frame this situation as: black Americans, more than other groups, disproportionately enjoy smoking menthols, and this action is banning something they enjoy doing, and therefore is racist for the completely opposite reason!
lower-income people disproportionately consume fast food. is this "killing" them, and should therefore be banned, because fast food is disproportionately "killing" lower-income people? the same principle applies here.
also, I hope you're not in favor of "safe shoot-up sites" for heroin, etc., at the same time as you hold these views about menthols and black people, because that would be pretty contradictory!
the possibility of a world where weed is legal and menthols can only be acquired illegally, handmade on the black market, is an interesting one, that's for sure!
YES
Time and time again, the tobacco industry has been shown to specifically target children. Why? Because children are dumber than adults and are more malleable to advertising. Stop burying your head in the sand.
"I hope you're not in favor of "safe shoot-up sites" for heroin, etc.,"
This is an accusation. Show your evidence or shut the fuck up.
Stop playing dumb. This is plain as day an accusation of hypocrisy (for which you have NO evidence.) The only good arguments against the prohibition against harmful substances is when the prohibition would do more harm than the substance itself; this cannot be shown for tobacco. This is why you and others who defend the tobacco industry are always desperate to change the subject. You think you can gaslight me into ignoring the intent of your malicious rhetoric? Sincerely: fuck off. I wish to never see another remark from you again.
Why? Is having compassion some sort of vice? Am I sinning when I look at people who for whatever reason make self-destructive choices and pick the empathic option?
Sad but true.
So which is it? What move can you make that isn't panned by critics as having ulterior racist motives?
This take is bought and paid for by the tobacco industry.
I smoke, but I despise flavored tobaccos. Not as much as I dislike the notion of the government banning their sale.
Mixing in some dried mint leaf may be viable for those who prefer flavors; but when you're making your own smoking salad you've already gone beyond the pale for most people. Like meat; people prefer the convenient package over involvement with the details of what's inside it or how it got there.
Interestingly, when I searched for when the ban was introduced there was a BBC article from 2018 saying “ Tobacco shares hit by US menthol ban fear”
I guess it’s coming round again
They did also ban packs of 10 cigs, and smaller pouches of baccy.
But yes, lots of vape shops came and went in my local town, some tried to be bars or cafes, but it seems just small stores now.
Djarum Blacks and many other smaller cigarette brands and types fell under the ban. Djarum Blacks were forced to wrap their cigarettes in different paper and rebrand them as an inferior “cigar” product and other brands disappeared entirely. People, myself included, shifted their smoking habit to arguably worse-for-you menthol cigarettes, sold primarily by Big Tobacco. The exemption was one of the biggest Big Tobacco handouts of the 21st century, the other one being the enforcement of chemical certification of vape products.
I never wound up trying one as an adult (I've tried regular/mentholated cigarettes, both disgusting but I'm glad I know for sure). Cloves are banned now?
I suspect if one wanted to find them in their original, better form the easiest thing to do would be to import them from Indonesia somehow - the kretek, which is the Indonesian name for the clove cigarette, originated from there and it’s an extremely popular cigarette in Indonesia.
(I probably prefer the vice tax... as long as the public is expected to pay for the health issues of individuals who make crappy choices...)
A narrative cynically bought and paid for by tobacco industry propagandists:
> The disproportionate toll of menthol cigarettes among African Americans compared with the general population is a social injustice. The black community has long been subjected to the predatory marketing of mentholated tobacco products, particularly in lower income areas, where there are not only more advertisements, but more promotions and cheaper prices for menthol cigarettes when compared with more affluent neighbourhoods.7 Tobacco companies also heavily rely on their cooptation of community leaders to defuse tobacco control efforts.8 Black-led organisations with financial ties to the tobacco industry have played a critical role in disseminating misinformation throughout the black community. Such misinformation, for example, includes the idea that local policies prohibiting the sale of mentholated tobacco products are racist and will increase the criminalisation of individuals who possess or smoke them, exploiting legitimate concerns about racist policing to defend the tobacco industry’s targeted predation on the black community.
PDF: https://www.savingblacklives.org/_files/ugd/29e3b2_51eb6e3ea...
It's an attractive idea, but we're talking about the US so there are two big problems:
* AFAIK the FDA does not actually have tax raising powers, and it's not going to get granted any tax raising powers, so now instead of an FDA intervention you're relying on Congress to do something. Good luck with that.
* Most tax powers which do exist lie with States, and States are always cash poor, so a "pigouvian" tax quickly becomes a must-have revenue stream. Then one of the two bad things happens. The State encourages the sin you wanted people to stop, because that drives tax revenue, or worse the State gradually adds stuff which isn't a sin to the same tax.
You wake up and either there's a TV advert paid for by the State explaining how "A pack a day helps Maggie keep her lungs strong and local schools benefit!" or else you discover that the milk on your breakfast cereal now includes "Menthol tax" because "Menthol" now includes "Dairy products, root vegetables, writing paper and non-religious ornaments" after the State found a hole in its budget.
> so now instead of an FDA intervention you're relying on Congress to do something
Yes, that's the entire point of our system of government. We are not governed by executive dictate, rather by laws created by elected representatives beholden to their constituents. This is not a "big problem," it is a cornerstone for preventing your rights from being trampled upon. The straw man you write about your local state doing this is something you invented in your head.
How do pigouvian taxes address the problem, which is that Big Tobacco is using flavored products to target kids and people of color?
Brutal policy failure our children's generation will pay for and great demonstration of the results of valuing "disruption" only for profit's sake.
That said, nicotine is one of the least dangerous chemicals in cigarettes. A Juul pod a day is probably as bad as a half dozen cups of coffee in a day: not great for you, but also not really deadly.
This BBC article talks about the controversy, particularly from the Black community's perspective: "Why the proposed US ban on menthol cigarettes is controversial" (2021) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56934957
"How Menthol Cigarettes Became Black Americans’ Preferred Smoke" (2021) https://slate.com/technology/2021/05/menthol-cigarette-ban-f...
"How the tobacco industry targeted Black Americans with menthol smokes" (2022) https://www.npr.org/2022/04/29/1095291808/tobacco-industry-t...
^ That article talks about how flavored cigarettes were banned in 2008, except for Menthols. This other article from the time explicitly notes how legislators were fine with capitulating on Menthols as long as they got other cigarettes off the market. Which to me smacks of basically not caring what happens to Black smokers. "Cigarette Bill Treats Menthol With Leniency" (2008) https://archive.ph/W3o4z
"The Menthol Movement: How Tobacco Became a Racial Justice Issue" (2022) https://www.communitysolutions.com/menthol-movement-tobacco-...
And: "How Big Tobacco used George Floyd and Eric Garner to stoke fear among Black smokers" https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-04-25/inside...
Since last summer, the Los Angeles Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have tracked strategic efforts
across the country by Reynolds American to keep menthol cigarettes in the hands of smokers.
The company has hired a team of Black lobbyists and consultants, including former congressman Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.),
and sponsored the organization led by civil rights activist and MSNBC political show host the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Those figures have in turn stoked fears among Black communities about what the bans could mean.
Reynolds American for years has enlisted prominent Black personalities in its lobbying efforts.
This investigation has uncovered new details about how individuals and organizations working on Reynolds’ behalf have
failed to properly declare their links to the company. Lobbyists for the company in Denver successfully killed a bill
that would have banned menthol cigarettes. And in Los Angeles, protesters were paid to attend a rally organized by
a group with close ties to the company.
I don't see why it would be any less likely that the menthol exception was due to listening to black peoples opposition to the ban.