Will the menthol cigarette ban make Biden lose black voters?
Will the menthol cigarette ban make Biden lose black voters?
With cigarettes linked to about 80% to 90% of lung cancer deaths, the menthol ban is needed in the black community
It’s neither logical nor have I been able to kick the habit of doing it. Every single time somebody walks by me and is smoking a Black & Mild, I pause and breathe in the scent. Then, I look at the smoker to see if he’s my first boyfriend. It’s irrational to do the latter, considering there are more than 18.5 million current menthol cigarette smokers ages 12 and older in the United States. Of this bunch, menthol-flavored products are extremely common among African-Americans.
Additionally, African American B&M users consistently flock to flavored nicotine replacement therapy products. My ex is clearly not the only person who smokes cigarillos. But every time I hugged him, that was the “cologne” on his racing jacket. I don’t miss him, but I (sadly) still enjoy that smell.
But when a current neighbor of mine, a chain smoker, is outside, I often duck my head down and put my nose close to my shirt, trying to block out the strong smell of her cigarettes. Everything about the smell of it bothers me. It’s so bad that my dog won’t come near her unless she puts the cigarette down and only if she hasn’t started smoking yet.
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Her cigarettes are so much stronger than the ones that my college roommate used to smoke. (Both are white women.) I used to accompany the later woman outside to sit on outdoor benches so she could have a smoke break. The smell didn’t bother me from afar.
That is, until I decided to find out whether I wanted to smoke too. I’d tried marijuana before, which made me want to do nothing more than lean against the nearest piece of furniture and stare off into space for hours. I went on a Krispy Kreme run with a guy friend of mine once, and I was too relaxed to even chew a donut. Nonchalant is an understatement for my reaction to weed.
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The first couple of times I tried my college roommate’s cigarettes, I thought it was pretty simple. I smoked them like former President Bill Clinton claims he did; I didn’t inhale. And my roommate watched me puffing away like a movie star, trying to create shapes and having the time of my life. After two or three different “smoke” sessions, she said, “You’re not inhaling that.” I insisted I was. She squinted her eyes at me and declared I wasn’t. Instead of just handing me one to light, she showed me exactly how to smoke a cigarette.
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And the amount of pain in my stomach felt exactly like the 11-day stomach flu that ruined one Christmas in my teen years. (I am 99.9% positive it started from a pork chop sandwich I ate at a new restaurant. We never went back to that place again. Even before I became a vegetarian for the past 19 years, I never touched another pork chop.)
After I finished coughing and clutched my stomach, I looked over at her and asked, “Why would you inhale something like this? Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Not after you do it a few times,” she responded with a shrug. Then she inhaled again.
I was baffled. I never understood why someone would smoke cigarettes from that point forward. But I kept going back to thinking about how the cigarette smell on family members, friends and just about every man I’ve ever dated didn’t bother me.
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What was different about their cigarettes than hers? What was different about the cigarettes from my other college friends (who were black) versus the white girl I was sharing a room with? And I kept coming back to the same conclusion: Menthol — a chemical compound found naturally in peppermint and other similar plants. Nothing about the smell of their cigarettes was off-putting. Instead, it was damn near inviting.
And this is exactly why I agree with the pending menthol ban that will affect largely African-American cigarette smokers.