Banning flavored tobacco right move
The commentary by Chris Churchill (“Smoke only what Hochul says you can smoke,” Feb. 9) questions the wisdom of banning flavored tobacco products while allowing the sale of flavored cannabis.
Our answer is simple: We should act on what we know. We know that tobacco is still the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States. We know that flavored tobacco products attract and addict young people to a product that kills half the people who use it. We also know that menthol cigarettes have disproportionately impacted the lives of African-American smokers.
Smoking tobacco harms nearly every organ in the body. That’s why in New York more than 28,000 adults die annually of tobacco-related causes and 750,000 adults live with serious smokingrelated illnesses.
Surveys have shown that more than 80 percent of young people who ever used tobacco started with a flavored tobacco product. Those flavored tobacco products include fruit-flavored cigars that sell for as little as 5 for $1. Tobacco products shouldn’t attract young users by being sweet, cheap and easy to get.
For decades, the tobacco industry has systematically marketed menthol cigarettes toward African-American communities. And it worked. Today 86 percent of Black smokers use menthol cigarettes vs. 36 percent of white smokers. Black smokers are more likely to die of tobaccorelated diseases in large part due to this disparity in menthol cigarette use. Research has shown that menthol makes it easier to start and harder to quit.
So the facts make it clear. Ending the sale of flavored tobacco products will save lives.
Jeanie Orr
Albany Program Manager, Capital District Tobacco-Free
Communities Debora Brown-Johnson
Albany President, NAACP Albany