Menthol Flavoring – Should it be banned?
About 11 million tobacco industry documents are online as a result of the 1998 Master Tobacco Settlement Agreement with 46 states. In these documents are thousands of pages on why the companies use menthol as a flavoring with over 500 documents stating what they knew about menthol, especially its impact in making it more difficult for smokers to quit.
Menthol's cooling and anesthetic effects mask the short-term negative physiological effects of smoking such as throat pain, burning and cough. Menthol provides superficial physical relief as well as false psychological assurance about health concerns of smoking that would otherwise motivate smokers to quit. In particular, women menthol smokers perceive the mint aroma to be more socially acceptable than non-menthol cigarettes.
The documents also show that menthol attracts inexperienced smokers because it makes cigarettes less harsh and easier to smoke. Youth, racial and ethnic minorities are their primary target markets for menthol. In fact, the documents clearly state how the companies developed menthol products to appeal to youth. Youth smoke menthols because they perceive them to be less harmful than non-menthol cigarettes. And, menthol is added to over 90% of all tobacco products, whether labeled menthol or not. Marketing messages positioned menthol cigarettes as an attractive starter product for new smokers, unaccustomed to intense tobacco taste.
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the federal law which established FDA oversight of tobacco products, bans flavorings in tobacco products except for menthol. The tobacco companies who were involved with the negotiations for the federal law knew that removing menthol would result in reduced consumption of tobacco products and reduce youth enticement to try tobacco. Two seats on the FDA advisory board are still held by tobacco company appointees, as required by the law. Isn’t that the fox guarding the hen house?
Here are some facts about menthol use in the U.S.:
- Menthol has cooling and anesthetic effects that reduce the harshness of cigarette smoke
- Menthol cigarettes account for 27% of all U.S. cigarette sales
- Women are more likely to smoke menthol than men
- 40% of 18-25 year-olds smoke menthols
- Menthol market share has been increasing since
Tobacco companies develop specific menthol brands and marketing strategies for minority groups. Knowing that throat sensitivity was an issue for African-Americans and Latinos, they developed brands and ads to promote menthols to these populations.
- As a result, 80% of African-American smokers use menthols compared to 24% of white smokers
- 47,000 African-Americans die each year from smoking-related diseases; more African-Americans die from lung cancer than any other race in the United States; more African-American women get lung cancer than get breast cancer, and African-American men are 50% more likely to get lung cancer than white men.
- In general, African-Americans smoke fewer cigarettes per day, and tend to begin smoking later in life than whites -- but their smoking-related disease mortality is higher.
Information from industry documents, confirmed by independent scientific studies consistently demonstrates that menthol increases physical harm from smoking by increasing initiation and reducing cessation. Menthol facilitates and increases smoking which causes disease and death. Independent research has found that menthol cigarettes may provide higher levels of carbon monoxide, nicotine and cotinine (a metabolite of nicotine) per cigarette than regular cigarettes. As a result, adolescent menthol smokers are more dependent on nicotine than non-menthol smokers.
You can go read more of the FDA's report here to get more information on menthol.
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