There’s an FDA hearing going on today and tomorrow that marks the beginning of a one year investigation into whether menthol as a cigarette flavoring should be banned. Let there be no doubt about it: going after menthol (after banning all other flavorings last year) is the FDA’s first major step in the slow march of ever increasing regulation that begins with squeezing out consumer choice in tobacco products and hopes to end with tobacco prohibition. One by one, they’ll target tobacco products: first menthol, then “lights,” then e-cigarettes and cigars, and finally the president’s own Marlboro Reds.
Overly dramatic? Maybe not.
The FDA’s current regulations on advertising smokeless tobacco products—which prohibit companies from pointing out the obvious fact that smokeless products are far less harmful than smoked tobacco—make it very clear that consumer choice, transparency, and risk reduction are not priorities at the FDA (and they’re even less important to the tobacco control movement overall). And the makeup of the FDA’s tobacco control panel—which skews heavily towards tobacco control activists and doctors who consult for pharmaceutical companies that make tobacco cessation products—shows that science-driven policy is taking a back seat to political pressure from Big Anti-Tobacco. (Gawker says that the panel has a representative from the tobacco industry on the panel, but it’s a non-voting position, as the New York Times explains.)
I’d hoped that this hearing would look not just at the epidemiology and physiology of menthol as compared to regular cigarettes, but also look at what banning menthol might look like. Big Anti-Tobacco tends to declare something a win if it reduces tobacco sales, but what they don’t tell you is that those widely-touted figures only measure sales of legally sold products. Can you imagine the economic result of arbitrarily banning a product that makes up over a third of the US cigarette market? Smuggling and black markets; reductions in taxable sales; enforcement costs. Now imagine if the rules were rigorous enough to apply to individuals rather than just manufacturers and retailers: criminalization of smoking menthols, smoker harassment, a War on Menthol. Locking up adults because they want a little minty freshness with their cigarettes.
Are any of these outside the realm of plausibility?
The drug war tells us no. Prohibition tells us no. Last year’s ban on other flavored cigarettes—still available at many stores if you know where to go and who to ask—tells us no.
But these aren’t the questions the panel is asking, which I guess is kind of a small blessing since there isn’t a panelist among them qualified to answer questions about the real world consequences of their conference-room conjecture. Maybe next time they can bring in someone from LEAP to talk about what prohibition—or even overtaxation—of popular products really looks like.)
No, if what I’ve listened to so far this morning is any indication of what we have in store for this process—statistical tomfoolery, emotion, and rhetoric that is all likely to go unchallenged in any meaningful way by companies that are rightfully afraid to speak out because it could be even worse—it’s going to be a long two days. And a long year of waiting for March 23, 2011, when the panel is expected to release its recommendations.
Until then, menthol smokers: smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. And maybe consider stockpiling ‘em while you can.
P.S. Welcome aboard, indeed: I’d never seen this old ad before, but rugged blue-collar fisherman Newport man is way hotter than the Marlboro man. Just sayin’.
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As we learned from the health care debate, public opinion, common sense, and economic evidence actually don’t matter all that much to our current crop of politicians.