Big Tobacco targeting minority youth. (Haley Barbour would be proud)

[RyanPsych]

According to a recent Stanford University Medical School study, described in Science Daily, the big tobacco companies are trying to lure minority youth into smoking menthol cigarettes. Even thought these companies know many of the these young people will eventually die from smoking their product, and they claim not to be targeting young people, the evidence uncovered by the Stanford report makes it clear these companies are out to make a profit by selling as much death and disease as they can to minority youth.

The Food and Drug Administration is on the verge of banning menthol in cigarettes. The report's lead researcher, Lisa Henriksen, PhD, says, "The tobacco companies went out of their way to argue to the Food and Drug Administration that they don't use racial targeting. This evidence is not consistent with those claims."

Menthol is used to makes cigarettes less harsh and is said in company ads to bring about a feeling of "freshness." The major users of these kinds of cigarettes are teenagers, minorities and the poor ("low-income populations"). The FDA tasked the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee to study the health hazards of menthol cigarettes, and the committee concluded, "Removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit public health in the United States."

This is not very startling, since removing all cigarettes would benefit public health. Naturally, we didn't need a special committee to know that banning menthol cigarettes would be beneficial. The recommendation is non-binding anyway. The committee is going to meet again in the middle of July to write up a final report. Let's hope it is more specific than the quote in Science Daily.

keep reading at: http://www.peoplesworld.org/big-tobacco-targets-minority-youth/

[KansDem]

1. I understand Big Tobacco gave free cigarettes to US soldiers shipping overseas during WWII

When they came back, Big Tobacco had a new, huge consumer base.

These vets were hooked on cigarettes made possible by their addictive effect which Big Tobacco denied having except internal memos indicated Big Tobacco knew about...

Big Tobacco: "a good consumer is an addicted consumer."

[Ernesto]

4. It surely happened in Vietnam.... nt

[monmouth]

2. How do they expect these young people to afford cigarettes?

[SnakeEyes]

3. Is this a correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation situation?

Or is there actually evidence that they are trying to target minors with menthol cigarettes?