Banning menthols: an epic Dem vote suppression self-own.
Republicans should fight for tobacco like they have never fought before.
Biden’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced that it has committed to draft “regulations” to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes and all flavored cigars this year. Here’s the thing: somewhere between 16-18% of Black Americans smoke. By the FDA’s own data, almost 85% of them smoke menthol cigarettes; other sources put the figure at closer to 75%. In any case the FDA is promising to ban a leisure product purchased by six or seven million black Americans.
Why am I “making this about race?” Because the FDA is. In the words of Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D.:
With these actions, the FDA will help significantly reduce youth initiation, increase the chances of smoking cessation among current smokers, 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.
Of course, low-income populations of white people are far more likely to smoke non-menthol cigarettes, which the FDA is not planning to ban. Their Acting Commissioner, completely out of touch, sanctimoniously applauds herself this brazenly paternalistic treatment. To pursue “health equities” we apparently have to ban products that Black Americans like: they can’t help themselves!
Something tells me a whole lot of Black voters are going to say, “Yeah, well, that’s sure not what I thought I was voting for.”
I’m not saying most Black voters that have been deprived of their Newports or their Kools are going to march right out and register as Republicans. But as the Democrats are constantly reminding us — and they are not wrong — the turnout of Black voters is a really big deal in elections. Democrats claim that Black Americans in Georgia might vote in reduced numbers if activists can’t hand out bottled water or pizza. What kind of patience can they expect from voters that they have put in nicotine fits? How many people are going to want to stand for hours in long lines to reward the very people who took their cigarettes away?
Doubtless Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D. thinks she is surfing a great progressive wave here: the European Union and the United Kingdom banned menthol cigarettes in May of 2020. She is an object lesson on how utterly out-of-touch the intelligentsia are with ordinary Americans.
Hey Republicans, hammer on this.
Today’s GOP has been doing a truly terrible job of message control. For example, after teachers’ unions around the country gave them political gift of a lifetime — by refusing to send fully vaccinated teachers back to their “essential work” — Republicans should have been beating the School Choice drum like they were “Animal” from the Muppets. This was an opportunity that the Right could not afford to miss, and they have largely squandered it.
This is another such issue. Republicans absolutely must not let anyone miss the fact that the Democratic Party is banning products enjoyed mainly by Black Americans —because they are enjoyed mainly by Black Americans — and that the position of this Party, the “Democratic” one, apparently is that Black Americans uniquely can not be trusted to make their own decisions in regard to smoking cigarettes. In the name of “equity”.
Shout it from the mountaintops. But wait, there’s more.
Hey Dems, tell us more about how you want to minimize interactions with the police.
How well has the Drug War worked out, exactly? How well did the Prohibition of Alcohol work out? Can the Food and Drug Administration explain why the Prohibition of Menthol Cigarettes can be expected to work out any better?
The following black advocacy groups oppose the ban on menthols:
Why? Because they know that prohibition inevitably leads to criminal enterprises willing to defy prohibition to deliver the goods. You’re just adding a giant revenue stream to established criminal organizations and gangs. How much of a revenue stream? Four percent of the revenue of convenience stores, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores, which obviously also is opposed to the ban.
Banning menthols will lead to far more cigarette smuggling and dealing. I’m pretty sure it is actually not that hard to turn normal cigarettes into menthol cigarettes. And if you’re going to try to actually enforce this ludicrous prohibition you’re going to see more confrontations involving the police, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
In 2014, Eric Garner was killed after being chokeholded (chokeheld?) by an officer of the NYPD. Why was the NYPD trying to arrest him? For selling loose cigarettes from packs without tax stamps. Democrats are just setting the table for more violent interactions between Black Americans and the police.
“Is this what you voted for?”, Republicans should be asking every time they encounter a microphone. “More crime? More shakedowns? Criminalizing the sale of cigarettes that Black Americans like, while other Americans continue to legally purchase and enjoy their Camels and Marlboros?”
This is a discussion Dems can’t shut down.
Unless you have had your head halfway up your colon, you know that the media leans very heavily Democrat and that they are dismayingly good at just making stories disappear when they put prominent Democrats or their policies in a bad light.
But as a friend of mine pointed out, this discussion is not one they can simply shut down. Before the dictates of the FDA are dispensed there will have to be hearings and Congressional review. There is plenty of runway here for Republicans to work jointly with the commercial and law enforcement organizations listed above; with the lobbies representing convenience stores; not to mention with the tobacco companies themselves. I wouldn’t shy away from this.
The Democrats will not be able to help themselves: they’ll try to “flip the script”, saying “See? Republicans are white supremacists who want Black Americans to all die from cancer. We’re trying to save Black Americans!”
To which a Republican needs only reply, “By taking their choices away. By expanding the Drug War to menthol cigarettes. By increasing crime in their communities. With friends like this, who needs enemies?”
Republicans should lean into this. There is literally no way for Democrats not to come off as sanctimonious, paternalistic plantation owners here. Just keep railing against the prohibition and watch the do-gooders dig themselves into a giant hole. There’s no need for Republicans to do anything to suppress Democratic turnout of Black voters. The Democrats are doing the best possible job of this, all by themselves.
Anyway, that’s my unsolicited advice to Republicans everywhere. Here’s a “loosie”, GOP. First one’s free.