Big Tobacco Lures Young Smokers With Menthol Cigarettes: Study

[Pale Blue Dot]

Source: Live Science

Tobacco companies are manipulating menthol levels in cigarettes to appeal to newer, younger smokers, part of a deliberate strategy to get younger people, particularly African-Americans, hooked, a new study contends.

Menthol makes cigarettes more palatable to the novice smoker.

"If anything, menthol is being used as a candy to help the toxin go down," said Dr. Gregory Connolly, senior author of a paper being published in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health. "If we let the industry go ahead and willy-nilly design the product the way they want to, it's going to lead to the premature death of millions and millions of Americans. Our research says we have to go after this."

A bill pending in Congress would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration power to regulate menthol and other additives in cigarettes.

"This study provides evidence of one of the many ways tobacco companies manipulate the ingredients in cigarettes in an effort to entice and addict new consumers," John R. Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, said in a news release. "Legislation in Congress would give the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products and put an end to tobacco industry practices that prey upon children and blatantly mislead adults. The bill would end the marketing of tobacco products to children, force companies for the first time to disclose the ingredients in their products and allow the FDA to regulate all tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes, based on science."

Read more: http://www.livescience.com/health/617524.html

[Ian David]

1. I've smoked a total of one and a half cigarettes in my entire life.

The first time, the person handing it to me told me, "Try it. It tastes like toasted marshmallow."

And then, after I drunkenly set my eyebrow on fire, she took the cigarette away from me.

[ForrestGump]

2. They're STILL trying to pull that crap?

In a truly just world, these people would be lined up against a wall and shot. Though I bet the firing squad detail would feel more collective compunction about doing their jobs than tobacco executives feel about doing theirs.

[SheilaT]

3. I don't believe any smoker

ever actually enjoyed the first cigarette. Which makes me (a nonsmoker) even more befuddled as to why anyone would take it up.

[Bluebear]

4. We worked hard to take up the addiction.

We wanted to be adult, sophisticated. You're damn right the first cigarette made us turn green, but by golly we stuck to it until it consumed us!

Thank goodness I am off the stuff but it still haunts me.

[Baby Snooks]

9. All it takes is one puff...

I can remember my first cigarette and I thought it was awful. But hours later, well, I wanted another one. Nicotine is one of most addictive substances as quite a few have found when they have attempted to quit. For some, all it takes is one puff. And you're hooked.

I can remember as well when everyone smoked. In restaurants, in bars, in cars, on airplanes, at parties, everywhere. Didn't bother anyone. Even people who didn't smoke allowed smoking in their homes at parties. I had friends who didn't smoke, one was horribly allergic to cigarette smoke, who had "smoking rooms" in their homes for smokers at parties. The majority of people usually congregated there. It was just what you did. In some ways, it was as much a prop as the cocktail. A drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Strike a pose. And we did.

I do tell young people not to smoke and to quit now if they do. The longer you smoke, the more difficult it is to stop.

The tobacco companies have always found ways to sell their product in such a way that it countered the surgeon general's warning.

At this point, the older generation is dying finally, most of them from diseases caused by smoking, the middle generation is the generation that never really started smoking, and the younger generation is the generation that will either allow the tobacco companies to continue killing everyone or will put them out of business simply because despite the marketing strategies, too many of the younger generation has seen what smoking has done to the older generation.

[LanternWaste]

14. Peer pressure & being drunk outweighed my distaste...

Peer pressure (trying to be cool) & being drunk outweighed any distaste I had for my very first smoke.

Not an excuse or a justification, mind you-- just an explanation of where my particular head was at in 1984. :)

[Phred42]

5. These people are Sociopaths and evil

At some point we just have to take them to the plant and grind them into fishfood.

[Damian the LHP]

6. I figured this was common knowledge.

Or, at least, a common assumption.

[Mind_your_head]

7. I don't believe that......

generally smokers don't *care* for menthol cigs.

(Is this some kind of (unpaid) market research study? *scratches head*?!)

[webDude]

8. old court documents showed that they pushed this to "Negroes"...

...because they were smoking less and they wanted to sell them more cigarettes. Same as it ever was, this time with all colors of youth. Diversity lives!

[Tutonic]

10. Who has $7.00 to buy a pack of cigarettes?

[crimsonblue]

12. $7????

It costs $4.23 here in KS.

[crimsonblue]

11. why doesn't big tobacco

find a way to utilize the vast supplies of tobacco they have for other purposes? Say... finding a way to make ethanol out of tobacoo plants.. Tobacco is a huge cash crop, and using it for fuel production would boost the midwest and southern economies and give Big T good PR. Or they can just keep killing people with their cancer sticks... Anyway, I'm outta here. I gotta go buy a new pack before I go to bed.

[Dogmudgeon]

13. I never understood it

I've been taking fairly large doses of Percocet since the late 1970s for severe ear and skull damage. (It kinda hurts.) I have yet to develop a craving for the stuff.

Cigarettes? I am literally the ONLY member of my family and the families of my father and mother who has never smoked. In a circle of about 35 people, it's everyone but me -- and five children under the age of ten.

The ones who don't smoke either gave it up or are dead.

I've seen relatives and friends become addicted to smoking -- craving a cigarette -- in as little as one evening. One girl I went out with got drunk at a party, picked up a pack (over her boyfriend's strenuous objections, of course) and needed to make a cigarette run at 9AM the following morning.

So here I am, a serious medical opiate addict, and I still can't understand either the allure or the power of tobacco.

Weird is as weird does, I guess, and nicotine does it well.

--p!
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