Fancy that.
The president of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, a body funded exclusively by Philip Morris International (PMI), is calling for a ban on menthol cigarettes in the United States.
According to Derek Yach, the ban is needed ‘not just as a matter of public health, but of civil rights’.
A ban, he seems to be saying, could be of particular benefit to Black Americans because they make up ‘more than one quarter of all menthol users in the United States’.
I don’t really want to get into a debate about race and smoking, especially in another country.
All I will say is, I personally would be reluctant to draw distinctions between groups of consumers on the basis of their race, colour or gender because, to my mind, that suggests that some groups are less capable of making informed choices than others.
We experienced something similar during the standardised packaging debate. Lipstick style packs and pink packaging were said to encourage women to smoke.
I don’t doubt they were meant to appeal to women but it was pretty demeaning to women to imply that they could be enticed so easily by ‘pretty’ packaging.
Writing for the Hands Off Our Packs website, Claire Fox, director of the Academy of Ideas, described as “insulting” the campaign against cigarette packaging designed to appeal to women. She concluded:
What lies at the heart of women’s liberation is FREEDOM. And yes - that means being free to choose pretty packets if we fancy and free to indulge in petty vices such as smoking if we choose. To ape the recent ‘gay bus’ advert furore: I’m a woman, I choose to smoke - get over it.
The article was later published by the Spectator under the headline, ‘Freedom also comes in pink’.
Derek Yach is also playing with fire (no pun intended) if he thinks prohibition will stop with menthol cigarettes.
There have been increasingly restrictive regulations on tobacco and smoking for decades, but the EU ban on menthol cigarettes was the first time a mainstream category of cigarette - menthols accounted for around 20 per cent of the UK market - had been banned.
Prohibition begets prohibition and while Yach would probably not be too upset if all cigarettes were banned at some point in the future, what about e-cigarettes, heated tobacco or other non-combustible tobacco products?
The idea that the tobacco control industry will one day sit back, ponder the smoke free landscape, and say ‘Our job is done’, is laughable.
As Forest has been saying for years, they will come after anything that contains nicotine, a ‘highly addictive’ drug whose use they are determined to curtail if not eradicate.
We know they won’t succeed - you only have to see how the war on illegal drugs is going - but they will have a damn good try, and prohibition is one of many weapons in their armoury.
Bans on menthol cigarettes (and snus) are just for starters.
PS. Hat-tip to Guy Bentley, director of consumer freedom at the Reason Foundation.
In the wake of Derek Yach’s article Guy noted that surveys conducted by the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World found that ‘the menthol cigarette ban has resulted in limited impact on smoking prevalence in the EU’.
While the market for menthol cigarettes in some European countries - not the UK - was already quite small, I’d love to know why Yach thinks a ban on menthol cigarettes will have a greater impact on smoking prevalence in America.
Smokers will smoke. Period. And if they want to smoke menthol flavoured cigarettes that ought to be their choice.
The president of the PMI-funded Foundation for a Smoke-Free World doesn’t see it that way however. According to him:
It’s time that the United States holds the tobacco industry responsible for exploiting Black Americans.
And the only way to achieve that, it seems, is prohibition.
Below: Guy Bentley’s tweet
