Menthol flavored cigarettes have long been seen as a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes, until an agency advisory committee two years ago found that they are not as safe as they seem. The findings were overlooked until now, as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said for the first time that menthol-flavored cigarettes are a greater risk than standard cigarettes.
The FDA pbulished a 153-page report, which they call a preliminary scientific evaluation, that states that there is not much evidence suggesting that menthol cigarettes are more toxic, but that the mint flavoring of the cigarettes masks the harshness of tobacco. This, in turn, makes it easier to get addicted to the tobacco and harder to quit.
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And yet, despite the recent findings regarding menthol cigarettes, the FDA has not proposed a ban of menthol or restrict the use of the ingredient. Instead, it has mentioned that it will get public input in the next two months to decide what restrictions should be implemented.
The issue behind menthol cigarettes is a complicated one with financial roots, as the cigarettes make up about a quarter of the U.S. cigarette market. In fact, estimates suggest that half of all young smokers prefer menthol and 80 percent of black smokers prefer it. Previously, the congress gave the FDA power to regulate tobacco and the lawmakers banned any flavored cigarettes (i.e. candy, fruit, spice) under the rationale that it seduced young smokers and facilitated them into becoming addicted.
The law, however, did not include menthol cigarettes and the FDA said they would conduct a study to see if banning menthol would be better for the people. An advisory panel was created in 2010, and public-health experts concluded that menthol made it easier to get addicted and that "removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit the public health in the United States."
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"There is a real public-health cost to this delay," said Stanton Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California at San Francisco. "But better late than never. If FDA proceeds logically based on these conclusions, they're going to have to ban menthol,"
Menthol cigarette makers are, naturally, arguing that banning the cigarettes would have a detrimental toll on the market.
"The evidence unequivocally shows that the result would be a dramatically larger illegal cigarette market than currently exists," said another report, supported by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Lorillard Tobacco. "As a result, there also would be severe negative impacts on public health, including exposure of smokers to more harmful contraband cigarettes, increased access of youth to tobacco, increased criminal activity particularly in urban communities, reduced government revenues and loss of jobs."
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