Jan 19, 2024 By Jesse Leavenworth

Eric Batch, Vice President of Field Advocacy for the Western Region, American Heart Association, at a "Menthol Funeral" Thursday in Washington, D.C.

Courtesy of African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and 20 of his counterparts made an urgent plea to President Biden this week to ban menthol cigarettes nationwide.

Representing states from California to Rhode Island, the attorneys general called on the Biden administration to complete a review of U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules that would stop sales of menthols, which health experts say have a disproportionate effect on Black people and other minorities.

Advocates of the ban say the White House must act by Saturday to ensure the rules are in place by the next presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. The FDA has said implementation requires one year, so advocates say a decision is crucial now in case a new administration takes over.

To drive home the point, the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council held a "Menthol Funeral" on Thursday in Washington, D.C.

"The tobacco industry is the biggest killer of Black men," the organization stated. "They have perniciously targeted Black people for decades."

Tong has highlighted the particular harm menthol cigarettes cause to the Black community, citing statistics that smoking kills 45,000 Black Americans each year, and lung cancer kills more Black Americans than any other type of cancer. In Connecticut, an estimated 8,200 adult smokers would quit if menthol cigarettes were no longer available, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The proposed FDA rules would prohibit menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes and all characterizing flavors, other than tobacco, in cigars.

“Menthol is added to make a deadly and distasteful product more palatable, with disproportionate health impacts in Black communities where tobacco companies have aggressively marketed menthol tobacco," Tong said this week in a news release.

As a result, according to the news release, about 81 percent of non-Hispanic Black adults who smoked used menthol cigarettes in 2020, compared to 34 percent of non-Hispanic white adults. The attorneys general letter to President Biden and Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management & Budget, also cited studies that found over 93 percent of Black smokers got into the habit with menthol cigarettes, and that Black female menthol smokers have the lowest quit rates among female smokers.

The attorneys general refuted the tobacco industry’s claims that the proposed ban would boost illicit trade or abusive policing in Black communities, noting that the rules would affect tobacco manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, not individual smokers. Also, they noted that Canada banned menthols in 2017, which in concert with a U.S. ban would reduce "the likelihood of illegal tobacco products entering our communities."

The tobacco companies are sure to sue, however, delaying the proposed ban going into effect, possibly for years, according to news reports. Also, politics could be a factor in Biden's decision, according to a recent report in The Washington Post. Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher has circulated polling, paid for by Altria tobacco, suggesting that a ban could alienate the president's supporters in battleground states, the newspaper reported.

Tong and health advocates in Connecticut have called on the General Assembly to pass a state law banning menthols. The state would lose tax revenue and many small retailers would take a hit, but young people who are drawn to flavored tobacco products through sophisticated marketing would benefit, advocates say.

"Kids are worth that," Kevin O'Flaherty, regional spokesperson for the nonprofit Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, has said.

The public health committee last year introduced a bill that would have prohibited the sale of flavored cigarettes, tobacco products, electronic nicotine delivery systems, and vapor products, but menthol cigarettes were excluded. Given the harm that menthols cause, the exception was glaring, anti-smoking activists said.

Connecticut currently taxes each pack of cigarettes at $4.35, among the highest rates in the nation. In 2021, the public health committee passed a bill that would have banned all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes. However, after nonpartisan budget analysts said the state could lose nearly $200 million in tax revenue in two years from a menthol ban, leaders of the finance committee removed the proposal.

South Windsor Democratic Sen. Saud Anwar, Senate chairman of the Public Health Committee, said in November that banning menthol cigarettes remains a priority. Anwar said the committee this year decided to focus on other tobacco products, but will try again in the next session for a ban on menthols. He also said he assumed that the committee's previous attempts to ban menthols have withered due to the expected financial impact on state coffers.

Massachusetts banned flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars, starting in June 2020. Results, according to government reports and news stories, have been mixed. A government task force reported last year that tobacco tax revenue declined by 22.6 percent from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2022. In addition to the gradual decrease in tobacco use in the state, smuggling of untaxed tobacco products also may have played a role in the declining revenue, according to the report. The number of smokers in Massachusetts is about the same as in Connecticut, 11 percent of the population in each state.

Many of the cigarettes smuggled into Massachusetts come from New Hampshire, where the average retail price per pack is $7.73, compared with $11.11 in Massachusetts and $11.60 in Connecticut. In 2021, about 24.4 million packs of cigarettes were smuggled into Connecticut, causing a revenue loss estimated at about $106.3 million, according to the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Based on menthols' nationwide market share of cigarette sales, the nonprofit Tax Foundation estimated that a nationwide ban would decrease tax collections by more than $6 billion annually.

Attorneys general who signed the letter to the White House this week represent Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and the District of Columbia.