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FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars
- 60secz 6y agoNot hard to diy. Time to invest in menthol spray companies?
- andiareso 6y agoFirst ;) [Edit] so sad :(
- endisneigh 6y agoI wonder if there’s ever been a study comparing the effects of banning compared to ultra high taxation of products. I understand that there are groups that are negatively affected but is banning even effective in improving health outcomes in this case? In my imaginary world the tax would be extremely high and diverted to things in the same area that have the opposite effect: e.g make cheeseburgers more expensive and subsidize leafy greens and produce with the same funds on a municipal level.
- andiareso 6y agoHonestly I completely agree. Taxation seems to be the only way to actual instigate change. Too high though you would likely lead to the same result as a full ban. I could see no real reason for a "blackmarket" to exist for menthol cigarettes as the consumption of them has remained pretty much the same over the last 10 years.
- aaronbrethorst 6y agoGoogling for "effects of banning compared to ultra high taxation of products" produces useful results that answer your question. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151217165607.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151217165607.h... tl;dr: they have different, but complementary effects.
- Alupis 6y agoPeople will rationalize the choice (since it's still available) and end up spending more on the same item, which doesn't reduce usage - it just means the people using this item now have less money than before. So, if the goal is to remove the item entirely, it has to be banned from production/import rather than highly taxed. I don't really think bans are great either - we're all adults and can make our own choices. Provide better education about the effects/impacts of the choice, then let the informed adults make their own decision.
- endisneigh 6y agoThe point isn’t just to tax, but to use the funds to create things that are significantly cheaper and reverse the effect. Taxing obviously affects the demand and cost of consumption but that money should go somewhere useful, ideally not into the ether that is government spending.
- Alupis 6y agoYour plan falls apart when it comes to the "vices" and "Sin Taxes", in my opinion. You won't prevent people from indulging in their choice of "vice" or "sin", you'll just make those people more poor than before. People who smoke and are addicted won't suddenly substitute smoking with chewing bubble gum or eating salads simply because those are cheaper options...
- endisneigh 6y agoIt’s not about those specific people, it’s about the aggregate. They probably won’t chew gum, but you can probably help other poor people in the same community. Compared to what- banning it which creates some level of a black market and more waste by policing what was previously a legal activity. Not to mention fining or otherwise enforcing the new law also makes those poor people even poorer and removes choice.
- Alupis 6y agoOr you could just not try to Social Engineer society... It rarely works anyway, and often leads to unintended consequences. Educate people about the choices and why it might be bad for them to choose one way over the other - then hands off, let the now-educated adults make their own decisions. We can look at smoking as a good example of this. Decades of hard-core educational efforts about the negative effects have inarguably led to a massive reduction in smoking. Has it eliminated it entirely? No... but it certainly has reduced it to benign levels when compared to historical smoking. When someone considers trying cigarettes for the first time, do they consider the costs of an addiction/habit - or do they consider the effects on their own health? The massive taxes on a pack of cigarettes has little-to-zero impact on the choice to smoke the first one...
- aidenn0 6y agoAt a certain point of taxation, banning is more effective because it's much harder to tell if you have an untaxed menthol cigarette than to tell if you have a menthol cigarette. So tax evasion becomes a limiting factor in such taxes.
- Scoundreller 6y agoHigher prices do reduce alcohol consumption. The problem is for the people it doesn’t reduce consumption of. Plenty of people will happily spend less on their children or education or safer products or whatever to continue their dependence instead. There are solutions to these issues, but governments love to say “see, we have scientific proof that this tax is good for you”. Similarly, a common anti-diarrheal (loperamide) is believed to help reduce opiate withdrawals if you eat a massive number of tablets (like 50-100). It doesn’t. But the FDA still “asked” manufacturers to only sell in smaller packs. Now that my family has gone through their bottle of 200 after several years, it costs me 5x more than last time. Meanwhile, anyone in opiate withdrawal will do anything to ward off those withdrawals. Logic will go out the window. Cost is irrelevant and anything will be done to get the funds/materials required.
- endisneigh 6y agoMy point is less about the tax and more about the money being used to help in the same community directly using the tax revenue from bad things directly. I mean we could just ban everything that produces poor outcomes even in moderation: gambling, smoking, certain types of alcohol, vaping, etc. If we can’t trust our own citizens to do things in moderation then what?
- GloriousKoji 6y agoThe broader term is a pigovian tax and there's tons of (economic) studies on the effects of them. The problem with crazy high taxes is it also increases the incentive to circumvent them, legal or otherwise. One easy example off the top of my head is a person could stop buying them from a corner store and start directly importing them from outside the US. According to the press release at least one study suggests it would lead to 923,000 smokers to quit, which is a definite health improvement.
- throwawayboise 6y agoMake the tax high enough and you just create illegal markets. We should have learned from Prohibition and the War on Drugs that if people want to get high, they will find a way, and other people will be happy to provide what they are looking for.
- ketzo 6y agoI’m extremely in favor of harm-reduction legislation in general, and I think this ban is a good idea overall. Flavors are effective at hooking young people in particular — lots of vaping research has shown that — and so get it outta here. Great. But man, “ban menthols because Black people like them” sure feels a little weird. Like, I get that’s not exactly what’s going on. But.. it’s a little bit what’s going on? I guess it’s just worth watching closely any time someone talks about protecting disadvantaged groups. I think that is actually what’s happening here, but it’s suuuuch a short rhetorical jump to “well, the under classes can’t be trusted with lottery tickets!” and so on. Edit: just to make it abundantly clear: I don't think the FDA is actually banning menthols because Black people enjoy them. But I think their reasoning isn't too far from that, and it's worth being watchful for that sort of paternalism, IMO.
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- whatshisface 6y agoWell, that's the same Libertarian argument whether black people are involved or not. Every vice is something that people like. That's what the concept of a vice means, as opposed to diseases, crimes, or tragedies. The "is it paternalistic to change other people's willful behavior" question is one that has dogged every prohibition debate since time immemorial.
- atlasunshrugged 6y agoYeah, I'm sympathetic to the government wanting to protect the health of folks (or if you're a cynic like me, making sure that citizens are productive for longer and don't use as many healthcare resources) but this feels super paternalistic. Why not just dramatically increase the taxes so people can still choose to pay a high price if they want to?
- whatshisface 6y ago
- benjohnson 6y agoFrankly this seems paternalistic. It's hard for me to read this and not translate it as: "We found something non-white people enjoy and we're going to ruin it. For their own good."
- toomuchtodo 6y agoNew Zealand has an age requirement for tobacco, and has also (edit: proposed) to ban sales of it entirely based on birth year (2004 and forward) to phase out its consumption. I’d say this doesn’t go far enough. We’ve known for over half a century the damage tobacco consumption does to a person’s body. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/16/new-zealand-aims-to-create-smoke-free-generation-cigarettes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/16/new-zealand-ai...
- howeyc 6y agoAmazing how positions differ. I'm of the opinion you can ruin your own body all you want. As long as you don't breath it into my face, have at it. I wouldn't advise anyone to take up smoking though. I think you should be able to buy cocaine (as an example) as easily as tobacco.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI have seen too many addicts slowly kill themselves (tobacco, opioids, cocaine) to be able to morally maintain this position. It’s easy to say when you assume everyone is of sound mind and capable of self regulation, which is not the case. People have demons and mental health challenges that make them vulnerable. You’d need a model like Portugal, where they fund treatment programs and social services along side liberal drug policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
- aidenn0 6y agoBut of how unsound a mind must someone be before we say "I know better than you?" There are 10s of thousands of addicts on the street that the government does not feel it has the grounds to institutionalize. So we trust them to make every decision except which psychoactive chemicals that aren't alcohol they can consume?
- vvanpo 6y agoOn the one hand, I understand that complete prohibition for drugs and alcohol just don't work. But I have a difficult time squaring that against my feelings towards tobacco, where I feel it would be so much easier for me to quit if I wasn't tempted by its availability at every corner store.
- walrus01 6y agoWhat are your thoughts on a retail cigarette sale system such as in Canada, where they may be available in every convenience store, but there can be absolutely no signage or advertising, and they're kept in an opaque cabinet with no labels on it? https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/keeping-bc-healthy-safe/tobacco-vapour/requirements-under-tobacco-vapour-product-control-act-regulation/information-tobacco-retailers https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/keeping-bc-healthy... https://www.ontario.ca/page/tobacco-vendor-fact-sheet https://www.ontario.ca/page/tobacco-vendor-fact-sheet
- leetcrew 6y agoI oppose prohibition for the moral reason that adults ought to be allowed to make these choices for themselves and the practical reason that it doesn't seem to work well anyway. but that's a fair point. this might actually be a good use case for zoning. imo the happy medium is "manufacturers are allowed to sell X, as long as they make it as safe as it intrinsically can be" and "you're allowed to buy X, but you might have to go out of your way to do it". people that want to avoid X or pretend it doesn't exist would have that option too.
- s17n 6y agoIt probably wouldn't
- aidenn0 6y agoDo you think making it harder to get would help? Maybe requiring a license to sell tobacco, and limiting the number of licenses in a municipality based on population? Or putting the stores in industrial zoned areas rather than commercial/residential?
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
- veilrap 6y agoThis just feels like a continuation of the failed war on drugs... I don't smoke, but I have no problem with allowing people to do so in private spaces. Why do we insist on micromanaging peoples lives?
- s800 6y agoHealth care
- awillen 6y agoBecause our tax dollars pay for Medicare/Medicaid, so for those people who don't have private insurance, they're saddling society with the costs of their choices. In general I lean libertarian and agree that banning things isn't great, but if you want to make your own choices, you have to bear the costs of those choices. If you want to waive your right to government funded healthcare, then you ought to be able to make whatever unhealthy choices you want.
- kube-system 6y agoJust tax cigarettes to the equivalent or greater than the amount of dollars of burden they place on the healthcare system. Make smokers pay for their own choices. Externalized costs are the root of many seemingly insurmountable societal problems, and most can be fixed by simply accounting for the costs appropriately.
- techrat 6y agoYou're getting dangerously close to the whole "social credit" style of cost burden. Slippery slope, bud. Now what? Your healthcare costs should go up because you like your eggs fried and with salt instead of hard boiled?
- atlasunshrugged 6y agoI mean things probably will go that way as tracking of individual behaviors gets easier right? For example, I believe some healthcare providers will give free fitbits to users (I think the State of Nevada does) to get them to exercise more, so not a direct fee but they are incentivizing a certain behavior. Then you've got all the car insurers now that are looking at more details of your driving above and beyond the standard 1) how old are you 2) have you been in any accidents
- hackinthebochs 6y ago>and address health disparities experienced by communities of color, low-income populations, and LGBTQ+ individuals, all of whom are far more likely to use these tobacco products The messaging changes with the whims of society, but the authoritarian motivations remain the same.
- baggy_trough 6y agoJust awful. Aren’t we adults here?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- m3kw9 6y agoHow about requiring the flavour to taste bad
- gpm 6y agoAmusing, but probably too subjective. It's not like the people making it are going to co-operate with you in making it actually taste bad.
- teruakohatu 6y agoAccording to Wikipedia taxes make up 42.5% of the cost of a pack of cigarettes in the US. In New Zealand it is as best I can work it out, around 72% (including both excise tax and sale tax). One cigarette costs US$0.96 in New Zealand. Menthol is still allowed. This, along with bans on smoking inside public buildings including restaurants and bars, ban on advertising (they can't even be displayed in stores), and marketing has lead to significant falls in smoking. The downside is there is a growing blackmarket and robberies of convenient stores because they are worth so much and easily converted to cash. (I don't smoke and prices may have changed since I last read about it) Edit: Typo fixed.
- pdq 6y agoMenthol, not methanol. I’m sure the latter is banned.
- mortenjorck 6y agoThe question that should have been asked is "how can we make menthols less attractive to smokers?" Because this is how you make them more attractive to smokers.
- chmod600 6y agoAt what point do we say that we've just given up on the concept of freedom? For what behaviors will we say: "That's a really bad idea, but go ahead and suffer the consequences if you want to do it"? It seems we are moving in the direction of zero consequences first. By the time you have medical bills from smoking too much, you're on medicare, so it's not coming out of your children's inheritance. And then after the consequences are pushed onto other people, we say that you can't have the freedom any more. Seems like a good way to just eliminate freedom completely.
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- dawnerd 6y agoFreedoms are fine until companies are doing whatever they can to make something so addictive it's near impossible for someone to quit without suffering or spending lots of money. It's not just a someone choses to smoke. It's they got hooked, usually by deceptive advertising or peer pressure. Are you also against seatbelts? The police? Building codes?
- BitwiseFool 6y ago>"Are you also against seatbelts? The police? Building codes?" Obviously not, but those are different arguments about the concept of "freedom" and government regulation. A more relevant comparison would be about outlawing trans-fats, regulating the size of soda, portion sizes, flavored e-cigs, etc.
- dawnerd 6y agoThey're not really though. We should regulate those as well as companies are also using those to cause addition. I'm even saying that as a fat dude.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoOddly enough smoking actually saves the State money in the long run. Smoking citizens don't live as long and thus save money on medical care and entitlement payments.
- Syonyk 6y agoBingo... my "modern press release Bingo card with all the CJT terms" is full. Can't just talk about how it's better for humans, have to ensure it's disproportionally going to impact disadvantaged groups and such. I've no particular problem with banning flavored cigars, because they're quite vile as far as I'm concerned. I've had one or two by mistake or when someone gave me something, and if you're used to a good tobacco blend, the... whatever they put in them is not very good. With cigarettes up around $8/box, though, I've no idea why more people don't switch to pipes. A pound of good pipe tobacco lasts for months of regular smoking (longer if it's infrequent), and $30 will get you a pound of some legitimately good stuff. You can get a good pipe and tobacco for the cost of a few weeks of cigarettes, it's a lot harder to chain smoke pipes, and an awful lot classier.
- bmmayer1 6y agoThese policies are almost always celebrated on the basis of the goal of the policy but not the reality of the enforcement. What happens when someone gets busted with a menthol cigarette? Or, worse yet, selling a "loosie" menthol on the street, much like Eric Garner did? Is it possible that maybe there's a connection between over regulating people's choices and over policing peoples' lives?
- hackinthebochs 6y agoFor the good of black people, we're going to create a new class of criminal for which black people are overrepresented. For their own good, of course.
- 101001001001 6y agoIf you agree with this but disagree with the war on drugs then you are a hypocrite who probably doesn’t have the ability to form his own opinion from first principles.
- _rpd 6y agoWon’t fans of this flavor just switch to vaping?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- abstractbarista 6y agoHopefully they all switch to vaping. I'm excited to see the black market solutions to this as well.
- throwawaysea 6y agoIn general I am not a fan of the government banning things. People should be allowed the freedom to make individual choices and live their life unencumbered. Living in a state where everything is controlled, allowed, or disallowed by governments and corporations imposing their own morality and values is not living freely. Why is it anyone's business if someone smokes a flavored cigar? It makes even less sense when you consider that this government is allowing a free flow of drugs and criminals through an open southern border, including substances that are much more dangerous like meth or fentanyl. Lastly, I am just completely frustrated and exhausted by the continual hammering of "equity" and "justice" word salads used in every single press release coming out of this administration and the progressive/activist machine more broadly. Does anyone take sentences like this seriously: > [...] address health disparities experienced by communities of color, low-income populations, and LGBTQ+ individuals, all of whom are far more likely to use these tobacco products [...]
- bustin 6y agoI must have missed the memo that Prohibition worked after we banned alcohol and weed. This is a ridiculous overreach. The end game is for people to stop smoking altogether, and while that would be good for American health, this is so unnecessary. It is not the prerogative of our peers to maintain our health. It is our free right to poison ourselves in the ways we desire. In ten years from now when cigarettes are fully illegal and those "darn ignorant poor people who just can't help themselves because they don't know any better" continue to swell up and die from overeating, are we, the wealthy class, going to dictate what they are allowed to eat? I wish these were rhetorical questions but as we continue to socialize the cost of medicine we need to be very explicit that we are OK paying for others' bad decisions as part of the package. If not, we should not socialize the cost. Dictating what risky behavior is allowed is the wrong move, because there is no limiting principle. For example, in a world where we dictate like this, how long until we ban climbing rope because it makes it too easy to climb rock faces, which leads to injury and socialized health-care costs? This ban is a serious assault on American freedom and a return to puritan morality. EDIT: some phrasing, may affect the comment below :(
- atlasunshrugged 6y agoI agree with your sentiment but I'm not sure it will be the same. The companies that make cigarettes are few and far between and are much more likely to obey government rules to make sure they stay in good graces of the government and can keep selling their other highly profitable products. With alcohol people could make it in stills in their basements and with pot it came from across the border - maybe menthols will too but I'm not sure it's a high value enough product to do so that I would consider it a 1:1 comparison to pot.
- Gatsky 6y agoThey are banning sale, not use. It seems totally reasonable to say we don’t want anyone to profit from selling highly addictive health damaging products. This is ok. Your argument boils down to “I want the right to poison myself and the convenience to do it at easily accessible retail outlets.” The suggestion that we should restrict healthcare based on the degree to which a person is culpable for their disease is a terrible idea, and impossible to implement.
- Gatsky 6y agoNot quite sure of the exact timing, but looks like the Philip Morris stock price went up with this news.
- mhb 6y agoThe FDA Wants To Lower Nicotine in All Cigarettes, Which Will Make Smokers Smoke More: https://reason.com/2021/04/29/the-fda-wants-to-lower-nicotine-in-all-cigarettes-which-will-make-smokers-smoke-more/ https://reason.com/2021/04/29/the-fda-wants-to-lower-nicotin...
- jdhn 6y agoI'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. At this point, if you start smoking that's on you. It's not like there's any shortage of proof that tobacco is bad for you at this point.
- glitcher 6y agoI feel like adults are giving away their liberties bit by bit in the name of "protecting the children". I am sympathetic to the issue of kids getting addicted to smoking/vaping, but to ban any and all flavors seems like a horrible idea. A drinker can go any liquor store and buy fruit flavored vodka. A recreational cannabis smoker can go to a local dispensary and buy fruit flavored weed - hell, even gummy bears! As an adult I want these choices available and it doesn't make any sense to me that only some adult vices aren't allowed to have flavors while all the rest of them do.
- wayneftw 6y agoThey banned menthol vape juice in my state so I bought a big bottle of menthol flavoring and some "Koolada" flavor that I just add to some tobacco juice. I bet the same thing would work for cigarettes.
- kristjansson 6y agoThe various personal freedom takes on regulation like this seem ring hollow. Regulations like this impose constraints on economic and commercial activities, not personal ones. No one will be prevented from rolling a mint leaf into their own cigar. It was perfectly legal to walk around New York under Bloomberg with a bucket of homemade sugar-water and a straw. The thing curtailed is profiting from activities which create undue harm. Should we feel our inability to buy a poorly-insulated household appliance, or a car without seatbelts[1] as a loss of personal freedoms? Should the market decide the appropriate level of inflammability for home furniture? I think we generally recognize that allowing the profit motive to justify a failure to prevent harm as immoral and socially undesirable. Why should limiting the motivation to induce harmful activity in others be viewed as paternalistic and patronizing? [1]: sidestepping the question of seatbelt-use regulations, which are arguably a restriction on _personal_ freedoms
- voldacar 6y agoDenying me the ability to make harmful or foolish choices dehumanizes me.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoI wonder if anyone who supports this also supports banning any alchohol with flavor.
- dade_ 6y agoJust don't touch my Cuban cigars!