Citing Health Of African Americans, Menthol Cigarettes May Be Banned
The African American community has long been the target of cynical, predatory, sophisticated, multi-billion dollar campaigns by tobacco companies promoting mentholated cigarettes like Kool and Newport, leading to soaring cancer rates and the highest use of menthol cigarettes among African American men and women of any group.
In no small irony, while African Americans have been targeted by the cigarette companies, their ancestors toiled as enslaved people on tobacco plantations in the south.
Now, six decades after the government first reported that cigarettes cause cancer, federal and state officials are moving to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes but not without pushback from tobacco company lobbyists, retail stores, law enforcement and smokers.
Menthol cigarettes have been banned in Canada, Ethiopia, Turkey, Moldova, the European Union, the United Kingdom and states including Massachusetts, California, and the District of Columbia.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced plans in 2019 for a nationwide ban on menthol products, but the regulatory process could take up to five years to complete.
Historically, the marketing and promotion of menthol cigarettes has heavily targeted the African American community, and menthol products are given increased shelf space in retail outlets within African American and other minority neighborhoods. As a result, nearly 90 percent of African American smokers prefer menthol cigarettes, and other ethnic minorities similarly use menthol cigarettes at disproportionately higher rates, according to a bill pending in the N.J Legislature.
Adolescents, women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans also show a disproportionately high use of menthol cigarettes. In 1995, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company started a project it called “Project SCUM” to sell cigarettes to members of the “alternative lifestyle” areas of San Francisco, in particular the large number of gay people in the Castro and homeless people in the Tenderloin. The acronym “SCUM” stood for “subculture urban marketing” and the company later renamed it Project Sourdough.
The New Jersey bill, which has bi-partisan support, was approved by the state Senate in June. It would ban all sales of menthol cigarettes but the bill still requires approval in the Assembly and approval by the governor. The bill notes that a common misperception is that menthol cigarettes are a “safer” alternative to non-menthol cigarettes, although studies have found that menthol cigarettes have the same negative health consequences as do non-menthol cigarettes.
It says that menthol has cooling, desensitizing, and proanalgesic effects and can dull and mask the bitter and irritating effects of tobacco smoke and as a result younger populations have the highest rate of menthol cigarette use in the country.
“As a result, menthol cigarettes are particularly attractive to first-time smokers and are associated with increased rates of smoking initiation and progression to regular cigarette smoking,” the bill says.
Menthol cigarettes are more comfortable to smoke and smokers tend to inhale more often and more deeply. Menthol smokers also have been found to be more nicotine dependent and less successful with smoking cessation efforts when compared with other smokers.
A January 2009 study of nearly 1,700 smokers attending a quit-smoking clinic at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) found that smokers of menthol cigarettes have a harder time quitting than people who smoke non-menthol cigarettes, even when the menthol smokers smoke fewer cigarettes per day.
“More than 80 percent of the African American smokers attending our clinic smoke menthols, and they have half the quit rate of African Americans who smoke non-menthol cigarettes,” said Jonathan Foulds, director of the Tobacco Dependence Program at UMDNJ.
A 2011 report issued by the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee of the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that “removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit public health in the United States.” An independent scientific review by the FDA concluded “that menthol cigarettes pose a public health risk above that seen with non-menthol cigarettes.”
The deadly, hypocritical menthol cigarette campaigns targeting African Americans have a long, tawdry and very successful history.
For over two decades, Kool was the only significant menthol cigarette brand in the U.S., with a market share that never got much above 2 percent. Advertisements claimed “throat comfort” and the “medicinal” properties of menthol, and some ads even suggested occasional use as “in between the others, rest your throat with Kools.”
Kools are owned and made by ITG Brands LLC, a subsidiary of Imperial Tobacco Company of England. Brown and Williamson launched the first unfiltered, menthol “Penguin” cigarettes in 1931. By the 1960s, growing public concern about the health risks associated with smoking prompted Brown and Williamson to release filtered varieties of Kool, including an 85-millimeter “king-sized” version in the 1960s, followed by a 100-millimeter or “long” version in the 1970s. In 2003, Brown and Williamson purchased the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR), making Kool a Reynolds brand. In 2015, Reynolds American and the Lorillard Tobacco Company merged into the the Imperial Tobacco Company portfolio of properties.[7]
R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) launched a menthol filter-tip cigarettes in 1956 under the Salem brand. It was followed with Newport by Lorillard in 1957; Alpine by Philip Morris, a branch of Altria, in 1959; and Belair by Brown & Williamson in 1960. Philip Morris also markets Marlboro Ice Blast, a mentholated cigarette which contains a menthol capsule inside the filter that can be broken by the smoker to boost the menthol effects.
Studies have shown that 80 percent of African American smokers prefer menthol cigarettes. To lure African American smokers, in the 1950s, tobacco companies supported civil rights organizations, and advertised their support heavily. Studies show the company motives were “to increase African American tobacco use, to use African Americans as a frontline force to defend industry policy positions, and to defuse tobacco control efforts.”
Tobacco marketers gave out free, illegal menthol cigarette samples to children in black neighborhoods. In a shameful marketing ploy, Brown & Williamson created its KOOL Achiever Awards program 1986 to recognize individuals dedicated to improving the quality of inner-city life.
The company also started selling Kools in packs of 10 cigarettes, in addition to the usual-size pack containing 20 cigarettes. The target market was lower-income or unemployed young adult black males.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Kool sponsored jazz festivals with advertising featuring popular musicians or actors.
R.J. Reynolds developed Uptown in 1989, the first cigarette brand aimed specifically at African Americans. The company planned to launch a six-month test market in Philadelphia in February 1990 but the plan met with grassroots opposition from the black community and the formation of the Coalition Against Uptown Cigarettes. In response to numerous organized protests, R.J. Reynolds withdrew Uptown in January 1990.
The Uptown package was designed with black and gold colors that were deemed attractive to the African American market; the cigarettes were packed with the filters down, after focus groups showed that African American blue collar workers often opened their cigarettes from the bottom to avoid crushing the filters or putting unwashed hands on the part of the cigarette that goes into their mouth. RJR also planned to introduce the brand during Black History Month, February 1989.
Cigarettes are very big business, that’s “B” as in billions. ITG Brands, a subsidiary of British multinational Imperial Brands, is the third-largest American tobacco manufacturing company in the United States. ITG Brands was formed in June 2015 when it acquired Winston, Salem, Kool, and Maverick, along with blu eCigs from the Reynolds American-Lorillard merger for $7.1 billion.
Imperial Brands produces more than 320 billion cigarettes per year and has 51 factories worldwide with products sold in more than 160 countries.
In July 2014, Reynolds American bought North Carolina-based Lorillard Tobacco Company, for $27.4 billion.
A 1985 confidential, plan by Philip Morris to expand marketing to ethnic groups and minorities was reported in 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation, now known as the Truth Initiative. The plan proposed to expand the use of more African American models in advertising displays for Benson & Hedges and Virginia Slims.
An RJR Salem sales strategy paper showed the brand “must be seen as being backed by other blacks — not as a big white company’s tactic to sell to blacks. If Salem can become a positive contributing factor to blacks’ economic and personal well-being, it could ultimately be ‘unpatriotic to smoke anything else.”
“Salem should be seen as a friend,” notes the report, which said the positive aspects of young adult black smokers should be promoted in fashions such as nose studs, braids and thrashed jeans and with jargon like “chillin” and “dis.”
The paper said that cigarette promotion should “speak to the fun side of inner city life,” as in “It’s OK to be black, hang out, and have fun.” Cigarettes also were promoted in barber shops and hair salons, at concerts, and offering a prize screen test with Spike Lee.
The RJR 1983 marketing plan suggests developing a large promotional program to boost sale of Salem cigarettes among inner city Blacks in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, St. Louis and Atlanta. The objective was to make Salem “a meaningful and highly visible member of the Black community on a continual basis,” the plan said.
RJR planned to put on inner city street festivals with Black-targeted musical events aimed at “providing Salem with positive image reinforcement and highly visibility within the community.” In addition to the street festivals, Salem orchestrated talent contests at bars and nightclubs, provided nightclubs with Salem cups, swizzle sticks, and napkins. RJR’s plan also included putting on cultural events which depicted the history of Black music and featured tributes to the great Black musicians. RJR planned to distribute 300,000 free cigarettes at the events.
“Negro principles should be used against the background of identifiable settings and situations in which they might find themselves,” the report said, such as a scene outside a telephone booth on a busy street; a night out at a cocktail lounge; driving an automobile in a traffic snarl; just missing a bus; and leaving a motion picture theater.
A 1971 marketing document from Lorillard proposes strategies to increase sales of Newport cigarettes to lower income African Americans. One strategy was to create a Black advertising character called “Bold Soul,”
“Complete with dashiki and natural, the Bold Soul is intended to create a relevancy that associates Newport with modern Black pride and individuality. The Bold Soul was also used to project an image of masculinity. Headline, short copy and language…tended to concentrate on the blue collar aspect, as well as the lower-middle to lower income levels accounting for 83 percent of the Black population,” said the document.
The marketing document by the William Esty Advertising Company from RJR discusses how the company could better market cigarettes to African Americans. It concludes that “Blacks tend to buy less things to improve themselves, they appear less concerned about health related issues. They are not followers of physical fitness fads and have less concern for the future and live from one day to the next. They buy products for instant gratification.”
The report says that Blacks live “superstitious, unplanned, impulsive life styles,” and recommends placing more Black models in general market cigarette ads in order to better appeal to this group.