A campaign to ban menthol tobacco products in New York state has drawn support from Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson and other nonprofits who aim for a tobacco-free generation in the Bronx.
The renewed push comes after both the state Senate and Assembly passed one house budgets that didn’t include Gov. Kathy Hochul’s flavored-tobacco ban, which includes menthols.
Menthols are used by half of all adult smokers in the state but predominately Black (86%) and Hispanic (72%) smokers.
And the Bronx has historically been among the city’s highest-smoking areas, with rates hovering around 13%, as of 2021, second to Staten Island (20%).
Some Bronx smokers feel it’s not the city nor the state’s business whether they want to smoke or not. Kingsbridge native Darius Winston, 35, said he’s been smoking for 23 years because his mother and grandmother “smoked a pack” everyday.
“I hear the health concerns, but when I think about all the other vices out there, I’m willing to take my chances because I enjoy the buzz I get,” said Winston. “My mom ain’t die of cancer, neither did my grandmother, so it really never scared me to think about what might happen to me.”
Menthol is a chemical naturally found in peppermint among other mint plants, but can be lab-made and when used in tobacco, creates a cooling sensation in the throat. Health officials say it makes cigarette smoke less harsh and easier for youth to tolerate; thus making it harder to quit.
In 2021, 41.1% of high school smokers reported using menthol cigarettes, with half of young people in the ages 12-17 population, stating that they tried smoking to start with menthol cigarettes.
According to an analysis conducted by the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and cited by coalition partners, if the city were to immediately ban menthols, roughly 90,000 New Yorkers would quit smoking over the next two years; and around 3,000 young people wouldn’t start smoking in the first place.
Anti-tobacco advocates tell the Bronx Times that aggressive marketing by the tobacco industry – roughly $177.3 million in New York advertisements – to the city’s communities of color and youth populations has created deleterious health effects for Black New Yorkers.
“These aggressive marking tactics, whether it’s free samples or medicinal benefits, they managed to build an entire base of smokers, and in their minds, if you can addict someone you have a customer for life,” said Phoebe Downer, a project coordinator at New York City Treats Tobacco, a grant funded by the state.
A nationwide poll show that 62% of Americans support a ban on menthol.
Critics say bans have historically failed to curb smoking and end up increasing illicit sales.
Smoking rates citywide have plummeted from to 22% in 2002 to around 11% in 2020, according to the city’s health department. A major factor, city health officials noted in a 2022 study, was a near-30% decrease in tobacco retailers from 2018 to 2020, spurned by changes to tobacco control laws in the state.
While New York’s higher-income communities saw a vast decline in tobacco retailers, lower-income neighborhoods like some in the South Bronx – where asthma and respiratory-related illness rates are some of the highest in the nation – didn’t see as much.
In April 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced plans to ban menthol cigarettes and all characterizing flavors in cigars. Since then, 145 U.S. communities have prohibited menthol cigarettes and other flavored product sales, and two cities have outlawed all tobacco product sales.
