To sum it up, the left says that Blacks are too dumb to get a voter ID and those same nanny-state liberals say that blacks just can’t resist smoking those menthol cigarettes and thus the government must stop them from hurting themselves.
“The Food and Drug Administration appears likely to move to ban menthol in cigarettes this week — a step, experts say, that has been years in the making and that could have a significant positive impact on the health of Black Americans...
"The winds are definitely in our favor," said Delmonte Jefferson, executive director of the Center for Black Health & Equity, citing both the decades of data that show that the cooling flavor in cigarettes makes it easier to start smoking combined with the current cultural momentum toward improving the lives of Black Americans.”...
The FDA faces a Thursday court-ordered deadline to respond to a citizen petition sent to the agency in 2013 urging it to ban menthol as a flavor in cigarettes. When the FDA failed to act at the time, two groups — the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council and Action on Smoking and Health — sued."
The NAACP and a number of “black activists” groups say banning menthol smokes is a “social justice issue”.If everything is social justice (global warming, reparations, criminal justice reform, food deserts, obesity etc,) then nothing is.
In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the activists groups write:
“the predatory marketing of menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products must be stopped and we should all recognize this as a social justice issue, and one that disproportionately impacts youth and communities of color.”
Reason.com’s Jacob Grier points out the ridiculousness of this push to ban menthol cigarettes while also making it a racial issue. He writes:
“It's not surprising that health groups want menthol cigarettes taken off the market. The more interesting subject is how the public health case against menthol collides with concerns about the policing of black communities, placing progressives in the uncomfortable position of endorsing a new form of drug prohibition. Is the cause of social justice truly served by outlawing a product precisely because of its popularity with African Americans?...
Banning menthol is now pitched as a social justice issue, but if we take the stated preferences of menthol smokers seriously, the racial politics cut the other way. White smokers would remain free to purchase the unflavored cigarettes that most of them currently consume, while black smokers would be paternalistically forbidden from exercising their own desires and subjected to policing of illicit markets if they try to fulfill them.”