How Detroit got hooked on menthol

Published Aug 20, 2021, 9:00 AM

The FDA plans to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes, but the burning question is why now?

Hey, Kerry, doing it the second here, and this is Detroit Free Press, his weekly podcast on the line. Before we get into the episode today, we need to acknowledge what's been going on in the world. This week we saw a historic and alarming moment when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. It came after more than two decades of U.S. effort in the region. And just weeks before U.S. troops were fully set to withdraw, we have seen people clinging to a plane, fleeing the country and fall from the sky. There have been reports of shots fired at protesters. Veterans are seeing it from home after putting their lives on the line. Afghan people here in Michigan are worried for their relatives that live in the country and remain unsure what the future hold for their homeland. Politicians are both condemning and defending U.S. choices there. And Michigan may need to prepare for an influx of refugees in need of a safe haven. The main thing I want to get across is that we want to hear from you, Detroiters, Michiganders, international visitors to the midstate. If you've got thoughts or ties to the conflict, please reach out to help us tell this story. You can reach us at on the line at free press dot com. That's o n t h e l i n e at free press. Scott, thanks so much. And know we're thinking of you. OK, now for today's story. This is carried through the second, and whenever we get a little bit of warm, a little bit of sunshine in Detroit

to give them to

me, we are side, it's okay if I record this conversation. So in the spirit of that, we went to Belgrade to get people's thoughts on the topic for this week. So you said you smoked for how many years?

Oh, I started smoking at Camp Dearborn. I was about 17 and I smoked on and off for about twenty five years started with Newport's two menthol cigarettes.

We're talking about menthol cigarettes. What? What made you stop my health?

Look at me, I'm sixty five.

In April, the FDA announced plans to propose a ban in the next year on menthol cigarettes and all flavors in cigars. That announcement came in response to a citizen petition and a lawsuit filed last year. Some people are not excited to hear this news. Is that good or bad? What do you think? I think that should be amongst the people. If the people like menthol in their cigarettes, for Christ's sakes, give them a menthol cigarette. But there are others who think there are benefits to the ban.

You know, when you limit access to something banned, that is another tool to help you quit.

That's me to Jones, and she is one of two anti tobacco experts we spoke with about the menthol ban. Yes, but also how we got here, why we need or don't need the ban. She's worked on health issues at the state and local level, one of the Community Development nonprofit, and she currently lives in Madison Heights, but she was born and raised in the city. What area of Detroit are you from? West Side? OK, cool. Can I get a neighborhood shout out?

Oh yeah. Shout out to Joy Road Exit nine. Cody Rhodes Community

South. Okay, great. She grew up around smoking. She also has a pretty vivid memory of smoking ads from back in the day.

Growing up back in the 70s and 80s, tobacco use was really widespread in the Detroit community. Our parents smoked, they smoke Newports. They smoked schools, you know, primarily menthol cigarettes.

This is on the line, a weekly podcast from the Detroit Free Press, where we take a closer look at the top news in Michigan. I'm your host, and this week we'll be diving into how Detroit got hooked on menthol. All right. So where do we begin? Because issues of cigarette ads go back before the 70s and 80s

after World War Two, blacks were coming back from the war and many moving from the south to the north moved into segregated situations.

That's Philip Gartner, our second anti-tobacco expert. He's with the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council out of San Francisco, the organization that filed the lawsuit against the FDA.

All companies, the tobacco companies included. We're looking for a specialty product there, a specialty food products developed for African-American specialty hair products developed for African-Americans. And it became clear to some people in the back of movement that there could be a specialty product in terms of smoke. Different, different. Different smokes for different folks

and menthol smoke was for black folk bars.

Menthol cigarettes are tobacco products that contain menthol, and menthol is an anesthetic, right? So it makes a smoother taste. And it's more addictive because it takes down the harsh taste of the tobacco product.

The deeper you inhale, the more toxins the nicotine you take in, the more toxin. The nicotine you take in, the more addicted you become. The more addicted you become, the harder it is to quit.

So menthol met Vicks VapoRub. Yeah, they're from the same family. It's a flavor.

Oh, I did not know that.

Okay. Wow. Yeah. You know, you think about big vapor rub, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Grandmama, when you had a call, they rub it and it says, now you add that to a tobacco product.

In 1954, tobacco companies started targeting ads towards black communities.

They began to hire more actors with black features. You would have Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Elston Howard selling cigarettes on television. Look, 1963 Elston Howard was selling fools on television and in newspapers. This is the time of the march on Washington. This is the time of the bombing of the church in Birmingham. The civil rights movement is in full swing. Blacks can't even eat at the counter. Blacks can't get jobs. Blacks are being hosed and a dog slipped on them with the tobacco industry destroyed. Aha. We have we've hit on something here, and they began to essentially flood our community with advertisements and gifts and and the like. Well, you know, you've seen the ads. Was that affected me the most? We're the ones with where they're playing musical instruments. I play the clarinet and the saxophone. I play a little piano if we enforce and yeah, those are the. Yeah, it was cool. It was, you know, it was it was the thing to do

at that time advertising. It didn't talk about any health effects.

Minu grew up in the 70s and 80s, and she was surrounded by menthol cigarettes. Her mother, father and grandmother all smoked menthols

in the Detroit community. Our parents smoked. They smoked Newports. They smoked cool. So growing up, it was really cool when I was five. My mother's probably going to kill me for this, but my mom would send me to the store to purchase her cigarettes with Tobacco Free Act, which makes it illegal for you to purchase tobacco products that you passed until 1988. So before that time, kids could go into the corner stores to purchase cigarettes, right? So an idea. And as a kid, I didn't smoke cigarettes. I've never smoked cigarettes, but it was no big deal for kids to purchase cigarettes. Fortunately, I was hit by a car when I was five years old, crossing the Street Joy Road to get my mom a pack of cigarettes. You would have thought that that would have made my mom stop smoking cigarettes, but it didn't.

Could you speak to the history of cigarette advertising to the black community? What it looked like, why it was done?

Yes, so one vivid billboard was Newport. It was the advertisement of a beautiful black couple playing free, you know, so it was about that image of family and togetherness and having fun at a time when the crack bomb had exploded in on the west side of Detroit, my community and drive bys were common. It really relayed images of hope and things that you know in our community we aspire to have, but didn't necessarily have. Now remember, you know, the days of the cool jazz festival. You know, it was an opportunity for us to see great artists perform for free. But the Cool Jazz Festival was a marketing strategy by the tobacco industry to specifically target African-Americans. They occurred, you know, all across the United States, in black communities, and it was really a way to connect black people through music to emotions and promote advertising of menthol cigarettes. Cool was not c, it was K O L, a local advertising company. And you know, they were given a contract to hire models at ten dollars an hour and they wore these all gold one piece jumpsuits and their only job was to go to the festivals and pass out these free cigarettes. They were called true gold at the time, you know, and it worked. One of the things that I say about that, you know, not that I look back on it is, man, there was some great black jazz artists who play music in the tobacco company was playing us

minu, menthol and the FDA after the break.

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We're back. This is on the line, I'm Kerry Junior, the second and I'm talking with Milu Jones of the non-profit Making It Count. And Phil Gardner of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council about the history of menthol cigarettes and a recent announcement that the FDA will seek to ban it. We do know that the work has been going on like your work has been going on for decades to do this. What does that fight been like and what does it feel now to get to this point?

I was working in tobacco back in 2009, when President Obama signed the Tobacco Cosmetic Act into law, so that law gave the FDA authority to regulate the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of tobacco products. So that was a win, right? And so almost immediately, the FDA banned flavored cigarettes. Before that time, tobacco companies have started marketing flavored cigarettes, strawberry, pina colada, all of that. So I was real happy about it, but it was almost a slap in the face to know that menthol was excluding.

Menthol makes up 36 percent of that market a huge chunk. That's Phil again. That's what the deal was if they wanted to keep their profit worth. Yeah, you can get rid of licorice cigarettes and give rid of strawberry and cigarettes and get rid of lemon and figure. You can get rid of all of the all of that type of stuff, but you can't get rid of menthol because that would have crushed the industry.

Nine out of 10 African-Americans smoke menthol cigarettes. We have the highest rate of death and disease associated with tobacco use, and here we are. And the FDA. Excluding. So it took tobacco control advocates, you know, to really push the FDA to respond. And finally, you know, after being sued, they now, you know, have agreed that there is enough scientific evidence out there to go ahead and move forward with the ban. Why now? Because Black Lives Matter, because we are finally at a point in our nation where people are paying attention to health equity. You know, social determinants of health and social injustices, especially in the black community.

The FDA has said it was evaluating the issue and supporting research to understand the differences between menthol and now menthol cigarettes and the impact on health. In a statement, Altria, which owns the Virginia Slims, did not comment on his company's past actions. But in speaking to the idea of a ban, he said a better approach is to support marketplace alternatives. It said quote We share the common goal of moving adult smokers from cigarettes to potentially less harmful alternatives. But prohibition does not work, unquote. Imperial Tobacco, which owns Kool and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, which owns Newport, did not respond to requests for comment, but both have publicly raised concerns with the science behind a ban. According to USA Today, the final ban could take years to implement after a formal proposal. There's public comment and likely a court battle with the tobacco industry. I went out and spoke to some former Detroit residents, some other locals that smoked menthols. They feel like they should have a choice.

I think that it can be a choice if someone want to quit smoking on their own. They should be able to do it, but I don't think that is fair, that they just ban Newport.

What is your response to them, to people who say that?

You know, my response to that is. It's about protecting life. This is not about picking on us. This is about protecting us. We were left out. And now it's time for them to include us. It's a human rights issue, we all have a right to help and we are the largest consumer of methylated products. It's about saving lives.

I ask them, you know, if our win at this point, this ban is implemented. My question is if you if you want to stop. And if they ban the cigarette, would you stop smoking?

No, I just found something else. You know, so because I've been smoking so long and you know, OK, stop

unless you really, really want to. People can always find a way to get half of, you know, saying something or find something, you know, go to different countries, city or whatever just gets some menthol. So. And then I also got responses that said, you know, I might I would quit. But people will find their own ways to get menthol cigarettes. I truthfully feel like even

if they ban people do and still find a way to, you know, make their own bootleg menthols, you know, they will do anything to or it will create a market for it, if you know what I'm saying.

So what is your response to that?

Well, first, you know, it's the FDA's responsibility, as I said before, to regulate marketing, manufacturing and distribution.

We should note, too, for everyone listening that the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU has also expressed concern with the idea of a ban. They say it could lead to more police interaction with the black community. The FDA has said they are focused on sellers, not smokers.

Right. So this is not about, you know, somebody making their own cigarette at home. You know, this is about the products and the cigarette that is harmful.

One thing that was really interesting is one of the guy I spoke to said how it was a habit. It's not like they don't. It's like they see the problem. They understood there was a problem they knew was bad for their health, but the habit. But he was like, It's just a habit. It's just like, I can't let it go.

Yeah, definitely. And you know, just when you were talking, Terry, it brought me back to my days working at the Bureau of Substance Abuse for the City of Detroit. And there were people, you know, who would come to me and say, Man, I was cross addicted, crack. Heroin, alcohol, I've been able to kick the habit for all three of those, and I can not let go of this cigarette.

What do you believe this band does in the overall fight for health equity? Those people who were saying, you know, yeah, the ban will be implemented. I'll find something else. What else is necessary to help, you know, bridge that gap of understanding so that the people in the community kick the the unhealthy habit?

So, you know, a commercial tobacco drives the three leading causes of death among Black Americans heart disease, cancer and stroke. Now know about you, but most of us have lost someone to cancer. Right. So when we are thinking about the overall health of the black community, we are looking at ways to reduce and prevent cancer. You know, and so banning menthol will contribute to lowering those numbers. Policy work amounts to community level change.

Many people think, Oh, they said they're banning menthol. And so, you know, the fight is over. The fight is a long way from over. The take home message is that at the local and state level, we have to keep up the fight to ban menthol.

That's where we are. We're looking to save many lives. My mom actually just quit smoking cigarettes three years ago. So I'm very proud of her, but I played it growing up our parents and grandparents. You know, they've really suffered. My grandmother died from emphysema, died from lung cancer, and my father currently battles imprisonment and COPD due to smoking. So I'm all about protecting my folks. I miss my grandmother. I worry about my father every day, especially during cold. You know, his lung capacity is very low. And you know, and I would say for people that are trying to quit, you practice smoking every day. Do you smoke a pack your practice 10, 20 times a day, you know, so don't give up on quitting. Quitting takes practice just like you practice having the habit that you have, if possible, people do quit.

Minu Jones, thank you for sharing your story and for going deep on this with us and giving us your time.

Thank you. Thank you, Carrie, for having me.

Additionally, thank you to Philip Gardner, founding member and co-chair of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council. Thanks to free reporter Jesse Randall for his work on this story, as well as Brandon Taylor, Allison, Yvonne Glover, Akeem Weaver and Elwin Walker, who spoke to us Abigail. This has been on the line. I'm your host, Carrie, to the second. The show was produced by me, Darcy Moran and Ted Davis. Mary Instrument and Jeanette Delgado are our executive producers. And Peter Bhartiya is our editor. Don't forget to like the show to rate the show and to subscribe to it. Thanks for listening. See you next week!

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