FDA Seeks Ban On Menthol Cigarettes To Fight Teen Smoking (npr.org) 234
The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it will seek a ban on the sale of menthol-flavored cigarettes. From a report: The announcement came as the agency officially released a detailed plan to also restrict the sale of flavored electronic cigarettes. It also wants to ban flavored cigars. In a statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb says the moves are aimed at fighting smoking among young people. Flavored e-cigarettes, menthol-flavored tobacco cigarettes and flavored cigars are all popular among teenagers. "Today, I'm pursuing actions aimed at addressing the disturbing trend of youth nicotine use and continuing to advance the historic declines we've achieved in recent years in the rates of combustible cigarette use among kids," Gottlieb says.
While cigarette smoking has hit a record low in the United States, vaping has been skyrocketing. That trend has raised concerns that a new generation of young people will become addicted to nicotine. Gottlieb says the moves were prompted by new data showing a 78 percent increase in e-cigarette use among high school students and a 48 percent increase among middle school students, from 2017 to 2018. "These data shock my conscience," Gottlieb says.
While cigarette smoking has hit a record low in the United States, vaping has been skyrocketing. That trend has raised concerns that a new generation of young people will become addicted to nicotine. Gottlieb says the moves were prompted by new data showing a 78 percent increase in e-cigarette use among high school students and a 48 percent increase among middle school students, from 2017 to 2018. "These data shock my conscience," Gottlieb says.
great! (Score:2)
Ferguson, round 2.
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In my experience, the predominant menthol smokers I've ever known, and observed over my many years, were blacks.
I'm not saying they're the only ones smoking menthol, but over my many years of anecdotal experience, most people I've ever been with or observed that were menthol cigarette (real ones) smokers, were black.
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Re: great! (Score:2)
Hilarious, I thought it was just me that thought that. Iâ(TM)ll add besides black smokers, menthol always seemed popular with white trash women as well.
A modest proposal (Score:1, Troll)
Re: A modest proposal (Score:1, Insightful)
Prohibition does not work. It is just like socialism. Tried and failed multiple times.
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As far as "not working" I would argue that alcohol prohibition had positive benefit in the sense that attitudes toward drinking were positively modified. People simply don't drink as much as they did before Prohibition, especially hard liquor.
Re: A modest proposal (Score:1)
Prohibition didn't work because it was fucking retarded to begin with and the population didn't want it. If there was no actual desire for it then no amount of ease in making would have sufficed. There simply wouldn't have been a consumer base.
Re: A modest proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, being hard to make is why you don't find any street drugs anymore. They all went buh-bye with prohibition. Coke, meth, e, etc, all eradicated with your simple plan. We don't have gangs shooting each other over territory at all.
Re: A modest proposal (Score:2)
In all fairness, the profitability of illegal tobacco manufacturing and/or smuggling isnâ(TM)t anywhere near close to that of something like cocaine.
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In all fairness, the profitability of illegal tobacco manufacturing and/or smuggling isnÃ(TM)t anywhere near close to that of something like cocaine.
You are right, but the dollar amounts are still in the billions. The profit potential combined with the shorter sentences vs. drug crimes make this an attractive market opportunity for criminals. I've read estimates that 59% of the tobacco sold in New York is black market. I can't say if that's credible, but it's a shocking number.
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The reason prohibition didn't work with alcohol is because it's easy to make.
Do you seriously think a significant fraction of the alcohol consumed during Prohibition was homemade? Yes, we've all heard of "bathtub gin", but the overwhelming majority of alcohol was smuggled in from outside the country.
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Not clear at all.
During prohibition they sold very common wine kits etc. With lists of things not to do...e.g. Don't mix with water, boil, allow to cool than add yeast, do not install a gas trap and wait a week, then bottle (when it stops bubbling). If you do those things for dogs sake, don't drink it. They sold enough to keep E&J in business.
Only the rich could afford imported hard liquor.
They also redistilled industrial alcohol, and the government deliberately added poisons that would pass thro
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Re: A modest proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
It really shouldn't be up to the government in the first place...ESPECIALLY the Federal Govt.
I"m still trying to find in my copy of the Constitution one of the few enumerated powers and responsibilities of the federal govt to regulate what I ingest voluntarily.
They don't need to be telling people, grown adults what they can or cannot eat, smoke, snort, inject or rub into their bellies........
The government was not established to be your conscience or nanny....and I cannot fathom why we continue to go further down that rabbits hole of having the government rule your life rather than let you do as you wish with your body and live with the consequences.
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....and I cannot fathom why we continue to go further down that rabbits hole of having the government rule your life rather than let you do as you wish with your body and live with the consequences.
If you cannot fathom why, then you're part of the problem. But I'll say it, people are stupid. The narcissisistic, NIMBY lovin', greedy, i-got-mine-fuck-you attitude thats the result of amerkin culture continues to breed ignorant, civically uninvolved Joe Q. Publics that perpetuate the societal ills you suffer. Wish I had an answer to fix people short of killing most of them.
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The Commerce clause allows them to do stuff like this. Not everything needs to be written out specifically. The Commerce clause because its relative vagueness allows the Fed. government to do a lot of stuff that isn't explicitly stated.
"Interstate" and "commerce" sure are vague.
Re: A modest proposal (Score:2)
Sounds like you should ban homelessness, too.
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Socialism has some successes. Just take a look at the Scandinavia countries. Or are you one of those people who doesn't know the difference between Socialism and Communism?
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Citizen of a Scandinavian country checking in to inform you that you've no idea what you are talking about.
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I might be wrong, but what I took from GP's comment is that he, and various unnamed Scandinavians, disagree that what the Scandinavians have is 'Socialism', not that he's asserting that they're 'Communist'.
As it happens I agree, though of course the debate can be likened to the 'no true Scotsman' argument, as "There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them" [wikipedia.org].
The reason I tend to support GP in this (while 'reserving' my right to disagree with anything else he
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And how many have been successful that didn't have a population that wasn't ethnically homogeneous?
Don't worry! they're working very, very hard to change that!
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Add to it that smoke is a lot easier to detect and hard to explain when you use it.
Easier to get away with chewing that shit instead though.
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Re:A modest proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
People say the solution to the illegal drug use problem is to legalize them.
Whenever a solution doesn't work perfectly, there's a knee-jerk reaction among people to suggest that the opposite of the current solution be tried. Such simplistic reasoning almost never works.
Re: Yeah Fuck Portugal! (Score:1)
And their much decreased deaths from Chinese poisoned fentanyl fakeheroin. Facts and human lives obviously dont matter to you..
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What? That stopped because dealers were losing clients due to death. Fentanyl and heroin are both available in your nearest seedy part of town. This is literally the dumbest thing I've seen on slashdot..
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Banning a product as a whole doesn't work. We tried it with alcohol, it didn't work out so well.
But banning subcategorties - e.g., flavored e-liquids or menthol cigarettes,
Re: A modest proposal (Score:3)
But banning subcategorties - e.g., flavored e-liquids or menthol cigarettes, while keeping the regular stuff around isn't a complete ban - if you must smoke or vape, you can. It's just they removed the attractants that make it feel less nasty or more appealing. So you can smoke and vape still.
They should do this for food. Ban all flavour. From now on everyone just gets bland protein chunks and scientifically formulated nutrition powder. After all there's an obesity epidemic going on, and Teh Gubberment Must Do Something! You can still eat, you just have to eat the legal federally mandated stuff.
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Because 54% of teen smoking starts with menthol cigarettes banning menthol must lower teen smoking by more than half. If the only flavor of cigarettes are regular flavor, then 100% of teen smoking will start with regular flavor. There is no evidence that banning
Junkies stealing (Score:3)
The junkies who stole your stuff are a small subset of users of illicit drugs. There are many other people who would like to steal your stuff that do not use any drugs at all.
Likewise, the shitters and pissers are composed of many different types of people, not all of them druggies, although there is a much larger correlation there, I think.
I think the parent's point is that for a very large number of people, there's no good reason they shouldn't be allowed to use whatever their drug of choice is.
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Here's a modest proposal: Ban all tobacco products completely.
Will never happen. Government makes too much money off tobacco to ban it.
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Here's a modest proposal: Ban all tobacco products completely.
Will never happen. Government makes too much money off tobacco to ban it.
...especially state government. How else can you tax the crap out of the poor (since they smoke way more than middle-class and rich folks do) and not get yelled at for it?
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Being that people are addicted to them. a Ban will only spur dangerous Black Markets.
By making your habit a bit more harder to start, you can probably lower the demand.
Re:A modest proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
So, a man should not be allowed a steak just because a baby can't chew it?
Since you obviously don't know your history, allow me to enlighten you: prohibition *always* creates black markets, which funnel huge amounts of money and power into the hands of criminals, who use it to do terrible things. Further, it pushes tax dollars to enforcement of the ban, which is futile and robs us of the better uses on which those tax dollars could be spent.
Also, it is morally wrong. Freedom is an inalienable right. This includes the freedom to choose quality over quantity of life, and do things like smoke.
If teens are getting this illegally, the right answer is NOT to take it away from adults, who absolutely should have legal access to it. If the problem is extreme, then require that shops that sell tobacco disallow teens on the premises (even when accompanied by an adult). And STOP THERE. A certain degree of abuse is a price of freedom and it is a price worth paying!.
Re: A modest proposal (Score:2)
Modern politics is solely about control. Not progress, not âoemake America great againâ, but control. The nanny state is all around us, and weâ(TM)re so divided that weâ(TM)re more worried about âoedefeatingâ the âoeopponentâ than actually standing up for the founding philosophies of this nation (and just because a few of those philosophies might be problematic to todayâ(TM)s sensibilities, doesnâ(TM)t mean we should throw out *all* of them).
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Prohibition creates a black market only for products whose use was already widespread.
New types of addictive drugs are invented and introduced by shady people all the time, but we don't hear about them because they are banned and removed from the market by the authorities in time before can become popular.
Calling smoking "freedom" is just bullshit. You are a smoker yourself, right? Then it is not logic that talks, but addiction.
As long as you smoke in a public space where others may be, you risk exposing th
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Calling smoking "freedom" is just bullshit. You are a smoker yourself, right? Then it is not logic that talks, but addiction. As long as you smoke in a public space where others may be, you risk exposing them to smoke. And it is by exposure to nicotine (in smoke or vape) that people get addicted to it. You don't have an inalienable right to create more addicts.
But if you want to inject yourself with nicotine, use a path, gum, tablet or inhaler. Then that's perfectly fine by me. That is your right.
So you are OK with banning cigarettes because that's what you see most often? It's OK to allow pat(c)h, gum, tablet, or inhaler (vape?) because that doesn't inconvenience YOU as much? A very little percentage of smoking is done in public but because THAT portion of a affects you the most, banning ALL smoking is your solution?
So, let me sum up your argument. Freedom is OK as long as YOU are not inconvenienced.
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The better solution is to regulate the nicotine content, and start to slowly ramp it down over a period of a decade or more. Slowly drop the addictive potential, and slowly wean the smokers off the drug.
Re:A modest proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't smoke but fuck off with your Puritanism.
First, yes, 2nd smoke is nasty and disgusting but people have a right to smoke in private.
Second, if people want to poison their bodies then no one else has the right to dictate how they abuse their bodies.
Third, banning is always a stupid "half-assed" solution (which never works) as opposed to education.
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I don't think that would work.
What I think could work though is to replace all tobacco smoking with vaping.
While you ban all smoking, you apply the rules that did apply to smoking directly to vaping. That would be the easiest to understand, and therefore the easiest to implement.
But what also must be done is to regulate the "e-liquid" so that it contains only approved substances in approved amounts. No more 10 times the nicotine than in tobacco. No unsafe solvents. No candy flavour. Appropriate labelling wa
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Re: A modest proposal (Score:2)
Look up what HFCS does to the body (hint its insanely bad compared to natural fructose and sugar)
If you're going to post this kind of nonsense, you're definitely not the best person to have defending vaping ...
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I agree - and sometimes I'd like to have a "+10 Troll" moderation just because it's so straightforward true but offending for those that suffers.
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Here's a modest proposal: Ban all tobacco products completely.
Hint: any time someone mentions "a modest proposal", what they're saying is very likely to be satire or sarcasm. For those of you who didn't pay attention in English class, the reference is to Jonathan Swift's essay by that title, in which he proposed eating babies as a solution to mass starvation.
One eastern European government back in the '90s did a study and came to the conclusion that smokers were a net win for the government. Reason being, they were lifelong payers of tobacco taxes and saved the gov
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Meanness might feel good to you, but I'm betting the mods looked at the tacit boorishness in your statement and acted accordingly.
Had I mod points, I'd've done the same thing.
just leave us be (Score:3, Interesting)
The argument against smoking is that it pollutes the air of non-smokers and affects their health. What's the issue now? I don't want ass flavored vapes, I moved away from smoking for a reason. Nicotine is so bad and yet you let people drink and push way more addicting medications. If I wanted a nanny, I would have hired one.
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The argument against smoking is that it pollutes the air of non-smokers
Yup, and as a non-smoker, as long as you're doing that shit outside, away from public entrances, or on/in your own property - I have no problem with it. I'm not a fan of nanny state regulations, because they generally don't know when to stop. You end up with things like banning big soda cups, which could've been filled with calorically indistinguishable from water diet soda, but the nanny state doesn't like the idea you're drinking too much of something with fizz and flavor.
If the government wants to get
Re:just leave us be (Score:5, Insightful)
Medical expenses, and the companies selling addiction. So taxes simply need to be high enough on those products to cover medical expense. So basically buy a pack of fags a day and the company that provides them should cover you health insurance. They sell the addiction, they should cover the cost to society of that addiction, use pays.
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No, the company that provides them doesn't pay the taxes. The person who BUYS them pays the taxes. So, buy a pack of fags a day, and you have paid enough to cover your eventual medical expenses....
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Not a smoker.
I agree. Too much nanny stuff. Let people make their own decisions.
We already have laws determining the age at which people can legally purchase tobacco. Just enforce those laws.
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Fact check: The ACLU got most of the involuntary commitments released nationwide, then Reagan closed the empty loonie bins in California.
The ACLU wasn't wrong. 'Mental health' was used as a police state mechanism by many of the worst governments of the 19th and 20th centuries. Including the USA. The exceptions are nations that didn't bother with the pretense (e.g. Cambodia under Pol Pot).
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Shrinks earned their rep. It wasn't that long before that change that shrinks goto treatments were lobotomy and electroshock. Granting they had moved onto thorazine, which does about the same, but isn't permanent.
The harsh fact is there aren't effective treatments for many flavors of 'loonie'. They should have guardians, but that doesn't mean we should set up a shadow court system with few checks on its power.
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People can be involuntarily admitted to a psych facility for limited periods ('seclusion') and must be released if they are deemed not to to be a danger to themselves or to others. I wonder if some of them released are deemed non-dangerous because they are being secluded in a quiet, supportive environment away from over-stimulation and combative people?
"It's for the chilluns!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I suspect it has nothing to do with teens smoking. Also, teenagers usually go for the taboo stuff first, if only to show off a sense of independence to their peers. If it isn't smoking, it'd likely be something else. Besides, teenagers have been smoking weed for nearly a century now, and at least on a recreational basis, that stuff is illegal as hell for kids to partake of.
Sometimes I wish that statists would just say outright what they want to do - it's not like eliminating smoking is a bad goal, and for once the honesty would be refreshing.
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Also, teenagers usually go for the taboo stuff first, if only to show off a sense of independence to their peers. If it isn't smoking, it'd likely be something else.
Which is all good and fine until that taboo stuff is highly addictive. I think everyone making these decisions would be okay if it were something else. As a casual weed smoker myself I'm actually quite glad I never smoked cigarettes in highschool. I see the money pit people throw their savings into all the while trying and failing repeatedly to quit.
Though I can't get behind a ban on e-cigarettes. 3 of my close friends have quit smoking through the use of e-cigarettes by slowly diminishing their nicotine in
Fuck you. (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck you, if they think they will take my Newports they better prepare for a fight. How about the parents you know... BE PARENTS!! Wtf is with people and their need to control what others do.
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Fuck you, if they think they will take my Newports they better prepare for a fight. How about the parents you know... BE PARENTS!! Wtf is with people and their need to control what others do.
This isn't a serious suggestion and I've never taken a puff so I wouldn't know (and I'm not in favour of an all-out ban)... but... ... would smoking a regular cigarette with a cough drop in your mouth at the same time have anything like the same effect as a menthol cigarette?
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Unfortunately no, I've tried it. You can still taste the nastiness of the regular cigarette through it. I smoke Newports because I like the way they taste. The alternative would be to quit smoking 100% because all other cigarettes including menthols taste like ass to me.
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Who the hell moderated the parent post "Insightful"?
That can only have been a smoker.
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You should not try to force other people to do things against their will, when it in no way effects you.
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Nothing. I did nothing. Someone else did something they weren't allowed to, so you and I are going to be punished for it? WTF kind of "logic" is that?
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Well, that's the logic that a large portion of this country has. It's called control, they just want to be able to tell you and I that we can not do something because they don't like it. Even when it doesn't effect them.
Who cares if it's just nicotine? (Score:4, Insightful)
The supposed worry is that kids will become addicted to nicotine.
But that was never a health issue, the other aspects of smoking cigarettes are what lead to lung cancer, not the nicotine itself.
If you remove vaping, what will happen is kids will go back to cigarettes. How is that better??
Vaping has been amazingly helping in getting people OFF cigarettes and the FDA wants to un-spool all that benefit...
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Yes.
Says you. Addiction is a health issue [asam.org]. Has been since before you were born.
"Health issues" are not limited to cancer. K thx bye.
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Running is addictive. And, it can have lethal consequences, to which my uncle's cardiologist will attest.
Sex is addictive. Shall we ban it? That would
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ACs definitely require government intervention.
Fixed [asam.org], loser.
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Most deaths from smoking are actually from heart disease, not cancer.
While tobacco smoke contains particles that are bad for your cardiovascular system, nicotine also causes heart disease itself.
This has been proven in studies of snuff-users in countries where use of snuff is widespread: there is a statistically significant higher rate of heart disease among them than among other non-smokers.
Almost all nicotine addicts (smokers and vapers) become addicts because they have been subjected to second-hand smoke
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But that was never a health issue, the other aspects of smoking cigarettes are what lead to lung cancer, not the nicotine itself.
Yeah I guess all the cool kids will instead just show off their patches at school. Seriously that comment you just made was dumb.
I agree with your point on vaping though. Several of my close friends quick smoking by switching to vaping, and the various recipes allow you to carefully control your nicotine intake and slowly drop it. When you're not addicted to a substance it's easier to change a habit.
Speaking of habit that's the thing you're missing. Nicotine is addictive but smoking is a habit. The fact tha
Turnabout (Score:2, Troll)
Read your own article moron:
Many of the secondary compounds (polyaromatic hydrocarbons, PAHs, aldehydes, and carbonyls) identified in ENDS aerosols and replacement liquids (e-liquids) are considered low level, especially in comparison to levels measured in environmental tobacco/cigarette smoke [5â"7,12,13]. Furthermore, the levels of toxic compounds identified in ENDS aerosols that primary users would be exposed to in a âoevapingâ session are also not expected to approach established threshol
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Is the danger of vaping as opposed to not vaping greater or lesser than the danger of inhaling air in the city as opposed to way out in the open country?
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The part I quoted was pointing out that all of your things are not as bad as actual smoking. But then I am used to reading scientific studies; the most reading you do is the back of cereal boxes.
I guess that makes you a triple-retard.
BAN ... TEENS! (Score:1)
That'll solve eveything and won't fuck with the rest of us.
Correction (Score:1)
Self-righteous people use children as an excuse to deprive adults of their freedom
Taxes (Score:2)
More like they want all the taxes they collect on tobacco but not on vaping.
Time to build something with Arduino.... (Score:2)
A ban on menthol cigarettes? (Score:2)
What year is this? I feel like I just traveled back to the 1970s.
Kids are really paying $10+ a pack to get lung cancer?
I just figured tobacco dropped off a cliff over the past few decades.
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Chicks (Score:2)
A severed head is speaking, forgetting its origins.
Nicotene is bad because smoking is bad. Nicotene isn't bad because nicotene is bad.
Quit trying to play up minimal dangers severed from the actual dangers that spawned them.
I haven't seen this much idiocy since the mercury/vaccine/autism link was disproven, yet by that point mercury per se was viewed as bad in vaccines, severed from the (false) autism link.
We are seeing a similar thing with gluten intolerance, a real issue for a small minority, and everyone
Smuggling now and then (Score:2)
Take a look at how tobacco smuggling is already going on.
Prohibition doesn't work. (Score:2)
I'm strongly against prohibition. Tobacco smuggling is already a billion dollar industry. Prohibition would only make that worse.
I'd honestly rather see more people die from smoking than to create another revenue stream for criminal enterprises and the private prisons that hold their offal.
I am curious (Score:2)
Why tobacco gets so much hate when the alcohol industry is effectively given a free pass ?
Not that I condone banning either but we're gonna get the pitchforks and torches out over flavored tobacco
while ignoring the elephant in the room of a bazillion and one flavors of alcohol ?
Makes no sense to me, but it IS the US Government. . . . so -shrug-
more bans needed (Score:2)
in my country chocolate cigarettes are banned. that is real chocolate cigarettes, there is no tobacco in them at all, it's real candy (that looks like cigarettes).
there was quite the uproar when that happened, basically everybody had at one time in their life had at least eating it once, but despite all, they got banned anyway.
i still can't imagine that these candies are responsible for turning kids into smokers as some kind of gateway 'drug'.
Thanks a lot a-holes. What did I do to you? (Score:2)
Should we also ban wine coolers and spiked punch? Alcohol is more dangerous to a developing brain than tobacco after all.
P.S. Fuck you.
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Good job polarizing something that didn't need to be. People of all race and color smoke menthol cigarettes. There big among women too, should the LGBTetc. Be against this too?? See how stupid shit like that sounds.
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Or course they do, but in all my years, the predominate smokers of menthol cigarettes have been black folks. Just factual observation....
Just because you observe something common amongst a race doesn't make it racial or polarizing, it is merely an observation.
I notice that most basketball players in the NBA are black too....same damned observation and level of factuality.
Quit being so snow-fla
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I would say the same percentage of blacks/menthol to women/menthol from my experience. I however am from teh poors, :( In Las Vegas of all places. However "This should be an easy situation for the Republicans to take a stand against, because menthol cigarettes are popular in the Black community." Was the polarizing race baiting part I was talking about. You really should not defend people like that. It looks bad on you.
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Logic is not involved in the decision.