Let’s ban all flavors of cigarettes

Let’s ban all flavors of cigarettes


IT WAS a good first step by the Food and Drug Administration to ban candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes this week under its new powers to regulate tobacco. The next and much bigger step is ending Menthol Madness.

As cancer-stick observers know, Big Tobacco really did not mind closing the candy store on cigarettes flavored like Hershey’s or Life Savers. They were not even one percent of the market. Menthol is by far the most prominent cigarette flavoring of all. But it was exempted from an immediate ban in the smoking-prevention act signed by President Obama in June.

The reason is simple: Menthol cigarettes are nearly 30 percent of the $87 billion US cigarette market. Menthol masks the harshness of smoking with its cooling effect and minty taste. The tobacco lobby and political allies bemoaned the impact of a menthol ban on jobs and government coffers. In 2007, tobacco sales generated $26 billion in state and federal tax revenues.

When Obama signed the prevention act, he proclaimed that the tobacco industry’s “millions upon millions in lobbying and advertising’’ on its “lies’’ to deny the deadly effects of smoking have “finally failed.’’

That is a lie as long as the menthol exemption exists. The exemption means that government coffers still remain more important than the coffins for the annual 443,000 lives lost to tobacco. The concern over tax revenues still overrides the $193 billion in annual health-related economic costs from smoking - a figure provided by the Centers for Disease Control.

The FDA can still ban menthol. Public health-minded politicians negotiated an explicit provision in the prevention act that commits the FDA to study menthol within one year. Any serious study should clearly result in a ban.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/09/26/lets_ban_all_flavors_of_cigarettes/

What would we do without the many people who want to be pope and ban things they see as sinful?

at the liberal free thinkers who want to limit individual rights for those who have nasty habits like fast food, soda pop, or cigarettes.

Not liking something is not a grounds for banning it.

Taxes on smoking are well in excess of its social cost. While I don't smoke I think the sin taxes on it are well over the top

Now that I have quit smoking (five weeks now), feel free to ban them entirely. I'll object on moral and constitutional grounds, but no one listens to me anyway.

Bad hair day? go to jail. no one wants to see that.

Bad music? go to jail.

We should make it impossible for people to harm others with secondhand smoke, and heavily regulate the healthiness of cigarettes themselves, but banning something is not the solution. If we banned everything that someone else finds distasteful, then there's nothing left in the world.

Alternatively, allow them to sell tobacco that doesn't contain the highly addictive recreational drug nicotine.

Kids couldn't be tempted by fruit-flavored cigarettes if they hadn't already grown to like the taste of fruit. Clearly, fruits are a gateway drug.

Sure ... and the specious claim of protecting some "innocent" is ALWAYS a winner. Ban abortions and protect the "innocent" baby. Ban guns and protect the "innocent" gunshot victim. Ban tobacco and protect the "innocent" down-winders. Ban alcohol and protect the "innocent" spouse and children. Ban ANYTHING that doesn't involve some inconvenience or sacrifice on YOUR part ... such a terrific "liberal" attitude.

Just exaggerate the harm and rant on and on. God forbid ANYONE do something that has any consequence to others, no matter how trivial ... just as long as it's something YOU don't do.

:puke: :puke: :puke:

Bull hockey.

When I was a smoker, I HATED menthol because it burned my throat.

Go ahead and ban it with the others, but not because it masks the harshness. Poppycock.

Just curious is President Obama smoked menthol cigarettes, he may want to sneak one occasionally and not be breaking the law :) . I liked menthol when I was a teenager but switched to regular smokes when I was about 20. I prefer Winston lights now but only smoke a pack per week.

Couches for one and tv for two. The two together breed couch potatoes, an American epidemic. How about banning oxygen for the free radicals it contains that contribute to aging and cut short the human lifespan?

Bossy little goody goody!:puke:

:rofl:

than I do for weed :bounce:

In particular those gum cigarettes that made a puff of "smoke" when you blew through 'em. The "smoke," I think, was actually powdered sugar.

It made me want to smoke as much as chocolate bunnies made me want to bite the heads off animals.