Menthol Cigarettes Retain Cool, But Head for Illegal Status

California passed a ballot initiative in the 2022 midterms that is aiming to ban flavored tobacco products, including vapes and menthol cigarettes. More than 63 percent of Californians agreed that the products should be outlawed. Tobacco company Reynolds which is famous for its menthol cigarettes by the brand Newport has now sued the state in hopes of stopping the change from going into effect.

Menthol cigarettes have been marketed as "cool", "smooth" and "refreshing", but have also been linked to making smoking more palatable and having a negative impact of communities of color. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in April that it was itself planning to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes nationwide. The type of cigarette still enjoys a large following in the U.S., with almost two out of every five cigarettes that were sold in the country in 2020 being menthols. While the overall number of cigarettes sold in the U.S. has declined significantly since 1980, the Federal Trade Commission Cigarette Report shows that the share of menthols in those sales has increased over the last decade to 37 percent.

Menthol cigarettes are popular among young people, the LGBT community and - most of all - African Americans. According to the FDA, 85 percent of Black U.S. smokers buy menthol cigarettes, compared to just around 30 percent of white smokers. African Americans do not smoke at significantly higher rates than whites, but Black men do and as a result experience the highest rates of lung cancer in the United States. Some studies have suggested that the perceived soothing effect of menthol cigarettes allows smokers to inhale more toxins, while African Americans have also been found to take in more harmful chemicals per cigarette than whites independent of metabolism factors.