The government estimates that banning menthol cigarettes could save 300,000 to 650,000 smoking-related deaths over several decades. Is it condescending to ban a product favored by Black people because it is favored by Black people making unhealthy decisions? Or callous not to? The product’s harms have a “disparate impact,” usually an energizing phrase for social justice warriors, but …
U.S. surgeon generals’ reports in 1964 and 1986 declared cigarettes first carcinogenic, then addictive. In 2009, Congress banned all flavors of cigarettes — except menthol, which are more than one-third of annual U.S. cigarette sales. Congress did this to avoid seeming racially insensitive, or perhaps to seem racially sensitive.
Menthol reportedly makes it easier to start smoking and harder to quit, and makes deep inhalation of smoke easier. Black males have the highest U.S. incidence of lung cancer.
Many public policies involve incentives for behaviors deemed socially beneficial: homeownership, charitable giving, having children, seat belt use (here coercion helps: “click it or ticket”). But ambitious government policies (punitive taxes, minatory public service announcements, etc.) to discourage disapproved behaviors can have unintended consequences, as well as the ominous consequence of encouraging government to wade ever-deeper into behavior modification, treating the public as malleable clay.
Banning menthol cigarettes would be another fling at prohibition, with familiar results. National Review reports that already more than half of the cigarettes consumed in New York are smuggled in. Perhaps from down Interstate 95: New York’s per-pack tax is $5.35; North Carolina’s is 45 cents.
Some people worry that making menthol cigarettes akin to gin in the 1920s — a contraband with a large constituency — would increase problems of policing in Black communities. But many progressives favor racial equality in smoking: They would ban all cigarettes. California and Massachusetts have banned menthol cigarettes, as have more than 100 cities.
Many states, however, are nicotine addicts, hooked on revenue from cigarettes, the most heavily taxed consumer good. The ideal yield from such taxes would be zero, but the end of tobacco revenue would be inconvenient, so tobacco taxes are calculated to be not too discouraging. All lives matter, but …
Besides, cigarette taxation is regressive: Smokers are increasingly low-income and impervious to public health announcements. Smoking is disproportionately high among persons without high school diplomas. Life is regressive: People with problems (e.g., low aptitude for acting on information) are especially susceptible to other problems.
Tobacco-related illnesses, the leading U.S. cause of preventable deaths, kill more people annually (480,000 last year) than vehicular accidents, murders, suicides, illegal drugs and alcohol, combined. Smoking is not a merely private transaction between a smoker and his or her lungs. Through insurance, and government permeation of the health-care system (17.3 percent of the economy), we socialize the costs of some behaviors (e.g., those that produce vehicular accidents, coronary artery disease, obesity, etc.) known to be risky.
In an 18-month span in 1990s in California, smoking declined 17 percent while the state ran broadcast ads like this: “I tried it twice and I, ah, got all red in the face and I couldn’t inhale and I felt like a jerk and, ah, never tried it again, which is the same as what happened to me with sex.” Time was, smoking seemed suave. (Sing along with Ella Fitzgerald: “A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces / An airline ticket to romantic places…”) It now is déclassé.
In 2023, the annual decline of the number of cigarettes sold doubled to 8 percent. The cigarette portion of the nicotine industry (which includes vaping and oral pouches) declined to 60 percent from 80 percent in 2018. Only 11 percent of U.S. adults smoke, down from 42 percent six decades ago. Information is working. Already the ashtray has gone the way of another relic of unpleasant behavior: When did you last see a spittoon?
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