Banning Menthols is the Crack vs. Powder Argument Again......

The FDA wants to ban menthols! Hooray - one more nail in the coffin of smoking.....or is it?

My guess is that the ban will turn out to be illegal since the FDA allows many other additives in cigarettes like glycerine and allegedly cocoa - so why go after menthols?

Then there is the racist angle - African-Americans and Latinos typically smoke menthols - especially in the teen years. That forces African-Americans into an awkward debate: smoking is bad but why is our bad somehow worse than yours? Oh right, you’re helping us.

The real issue here is – where do the do-gooders want us to go? Smokers aren't just suckers hooked by tobacco companies. They usually smoke for a reason. On a practical level this ban will force people to alternatives. Safer ones we think, like e-Cigarettes. Or off-prescription substances like Adderol and Valium. All illegal or frowned upon by the
FDA.

The point is that people aren't going to quit just because someone tells them to and when government officials dictate a solution without any thought to smokers motivation or alternatives, they generally create a situation worse than they started with.

This is a zero-sum game. Take away smoking and people will reach for something else. We need to talk long and hard about the something else……

Footnote:

Once upon a time menthols were the choice of white blue collar workers so things like who smokes menthols and why, could change, of course.

Wall Street Journal on the proposed Menthol ban.


Chicago Tribune on the Debate in the African American Community

eCigarettes - My Comments in the Wall Street Journal

eCigarettes in the Wall Street Journal

It is laughable that a product that is labeled as deadly cannot be replaced by a product that may be merely dangerous. Especially when no one ever started smoking for their good health in the first place.

The truth is that smoking is really a form of psychological self-medication.

You could argue that’s true for the interested parties too: the FDA, the States, the drug and tobacco companies and even the Health Groups are far more interested in preserving their own point of view – and funding base - than actually helping smokers.

The really interesting thing is that when you deconstruct smoking – take out the branding and all the marketing hoopla – it comes down to an odd practice that people seem able to take or leave with ease.

It also brings us face to face with the idea that tobacco is explicitly a drug and yet we don’t seem to want to have that conversation.

Bottom line – when you understand why people smoke you’ll understand that they need more than a “just say no” approach.

The fact that we now have alternatives to the very old fashioned smelly cigarette is a plus. Back in 1907 public health groups actually praised cigarettes as a health benefit over spit tobacco! (But that was before cigarette taxes and TB was the big bugaboo.)

What we now know is that debranding practices always make it easier to quit or a least confront the psychic issues that underlie smoking - so people can much more easily move on with their lives.

Yet, as always, the so-called do-gooders don’t care much about whether you live or die, just that you do it their way.