Eighty national public health groups, including the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Preventative Medicine, placed a full-page ad in Sunday’s edition of the Washington Post in support of a federal ban on menthol in cigarettes and all flavored cigars.
“The answer is clear,” the full-page ad says. “Saving lives starts by ending the sale of menthol cigarettes and all flavored cigars.
“Smoking kills nearly half a million people in the United States each year, and these addictive, deadly products are a big part of the problem. The FDA and White House have our full support to release lifesaving rules prohibiting menthol cigarettes and all flavored cigars.”
I personally was addicted before I ever had even a single puff, and plenty of others started the same way I did. I took a job to earn spending money as a 13 y/o kid cause I wanted Secret of Mana and that was a $60 or $70 game. So I went down the road to the nearest tobacco farm, and started stripping tobacco for $4.25 an hour. I left each 4 hour shift with about ½cm of black tar completely coating the palms and fingers of my hands. After two weeks cigarettes smelled good. I’m far from alone in this experience. So, no. Menthol and flavorings actually cause me to turn down cigarettes, I like the taste of tobacco.
You’re just being ignorant and holier than thou.
Do a lot of teens work on tobacco farms for their first exposure to nicotine? No, that was just you?
I mean, you also bring up the specter of unsafe child labor. That’s something else that we need to tackle, but we can also ban flavorings that make the tobacco more addictive to those who didn’t spend their childhood harvesting tobacco.