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FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

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Re: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

#201

Post by hellotomyrars »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #123
judge2020 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/seco... > Since the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report, 2.5 million adults who were nonsmokers died because they breathed secondhand smoke.

Honestly the secondhand smoke research is very sketchy. Actually anything that becomes a public health issue ends up getting distorted by the public health establishment. Case in point: flu vaccines. They’re so ineffective that no rational person would ever waste time taking them, yet many of us do: https://www.cochrane.org/CD001269/ARI_vaccines-prevent-influ... (note: the “no rational person” is slight hyperbole) Th…

The victims of secondhand smoke aren't someone standing on the street next to a smoker but people (and pets) who grow up in a household with smokers. Whether or not the numbers are what they are claimed to be it's hard to argue against the reality that thousands of children are subjected to the very real harms of secondhand smoke their entire childhood with no recourse, especially when they are most vulnerable.

I don't say this to say we should ban tobacco because "think of the children" but I genuinely think people seriously overlook this aspect. Someone smoking near you as an adult might be obnoxious but children in smoking households suffer and develop lifelong health problems for a vice that is entirely out of their control that many people don't even really see as a problem or think about.

Re: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

#202

Post by int_19h »

ajkjk wrote: post #130
chmod600 wrote: post #32

At 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 c…

Seems like a really oversimplified idea of what freedom is. It's not a binary where you're free or you aren't. You're never _completely_ free, or you wouldn't be able to pulled over by cops, forced to file taxes, or whatever, anyway. Like, yeah, you could stick to the "absolute freedom all the time" principle and do nothing to make people healthier, but if you had just done it anyway life would be better for everyone…

The problem is that your definition of "slightly" might not agree with that of the majority - and then you end up being targeted for your lifestyle choices.

As far as freedom not being a binary... true, but insofar as it's a function of social arrangements, it's possible to find (or at least strive to find) a global maximum where everybody is as free as possible.

Re: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

#203

Post by CivBase »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #112
jakeva wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not. Smoking isn't contagious.

Ha, I hear this argument all the time and it’s actually completely wrong. All social behaviors are contagious. They do spread exponentially. Especially drug consumption / smoking. Note: it’s not relevant but to be clear I oppose all drug bans (incl tobacco) and all the COVID restrictions. So don’t interpret my pointing out that social behaviors are contagious to be justifying the menthol ban.

This misses the point of what makes a contagion so bad. An outbreak of a contagious disease is bad because victims do not (usually) consent to them and often has limited or no means of protecting themselves against infection. A nicotine addiction is nothing like that.

Re: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

#204

Post by int_19h »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #196
howeyc wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who decides you're too vulnerable to make your own decisions. At what percentage of the overall populace being classified as vulnerable do we start removing the decision from the whole population. But yes, something similar to Portugal would be my preference. Health treatment provided by government, possibly a "Health Premium" tax paid on tobacco, drugs, alcohol, etc at point-of-sale to help cover costs. Different ta…

These are all great questions, and the purpose of government and democratic governance.

Governments - even democratic ones - do not exactly have a good track record on that. For example, it was mostly democratic governments that enacted compulsory sterilization laws back in the day.

Re: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

#205

Post by DanBC »

ksherlock wrote: post #24
andiareso wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly 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.

Eric Garner was choked to death by the NY police for selling loose cigarettes. That was 7 years ago.

That's not a result of taxation, it's because the US has a pathologically terrible police culture that sees extra-judicial killing as acceptable.

Re: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

#206

Post by hellotomyrars »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #85
ketzo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smoking is really, really, really bad for you. It’s much worse, and much harder to stop, the earlier you start. Banning flavors 1) stops some overall consumption 2) especially stops youth consumption. Lifetime healthcare costs for the negative externalities of a pack-a-day smoker can reach into seven figures. And most people, frankly, don’t pay that themselves. It’s a tremendous burden on our healthcare system. We ba…

>We ban lead paint, even though it’s super cheap and makes for vibrant colors. I honestly don’t see how this is any different. That's totally different. Lead paint leads to a ton of environmental exposure to unwitting people. Smokers by contrast have made a choice to smoke. Do you want them to ban bacon and soda too? Where's the line? Should we ban motorcycles because they're more dangerous than cars? What about recr…

Not entirely different. Smokers may choose to smoke and that is their choice but the people around them don't. Some of them may have control over their exposure but children (and pets) in smoking households are victims with little to no control over their exposure.

I don't think we should ban tobaccos outright, regardless of that fact, but smoking has real consequences for people other than the smoker themselves.

Re: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

#207

Post by LeifCarrotson »

oh_sigh wrote: post #156
LargeWu wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire "paternalistic" argument rests on the premise that the choice to smoke, or not, is for most people purely rational, and totally discounts the predatory nature of tobacco companies and the addiction that comes with it. Menthols are targeted at blacks, and especially black children, since the menthol flavoring makes them more pleasant to smoke. Of the 20 million American menthol smokers, 17 million of those…

There are only 42 million black people in the US. Are you really saying that 40% of black Americans smoke menthols specifically? And presumably some percentage smoke something without menthol? That doesn't seem right.

You do have to be careful with your groupings. I wonder if this isn't a confusion between the number of cigarettes smoked by a particular population and the number of people from each population who smoke, or something like that.

I'm not sure where the number '20 million menthol users' keeps coming from, perhaps somewhere in the data behind [1]? Regardless, [2] and [3] suggest that somewhere around 20% of the African American population smokes tobacco in some form. Among those 20% of black Americans who smoke about 85% use menthols.

[1] https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/cbhsq-report...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/african-americans/in...

[3] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/african-americans/in...

Re: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

#208

Post by Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #113
BurningFrog wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Smoking citizens are - on average - productive until retirement, but use up much less pension money. So the cynical policy would be the opposite. 2. When you increase taxes you get smuggling and illegal dealing with all the violence it brings.

1. I'm skeptical as the age of retirement keeps going up. Have a source? 2. Agreed that's an issue in contexts with low rule of law but I think that's less of an issue here than say Ukraine/Russia/DRC where there is serious smuggling

So does life expectancy. You retire later, but in total amount of years retired per person? Probably even more today still? I don't think "standard retirement age" tracks perfectly with life expectancy.

Also consider. The life expectancy of a 60 year old is above average. At age 60 you have already "survived" quite a lot of danger (adolescent drug abuse, driving accidents while young, opportunity to be a soldier in a war, crimes of passion in your twenties, mid life crisis, et cetera). So the life expectancy of a 60 year old is above the "average life expectancy", as many die before ever reaching that age.

Isn't economics fun?

Re: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

#209

Post by jdhn »

Gatsky wrote: post #192
bustin wrote: post #151

I 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 full…

They 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 t…

>Your argument boils down to “I want the right to poison myself and the convenience to do it at easily accessible retail outlets.”

That is the argument, and I find that it holds up just fine. It's not like cigarettes appeared on the market yesterday, their dangers are well known. Adults should have the ability to make their own decisions, even if those decisions are harmful to themselves.

Re: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

#210

Post by kristjansson »

The 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

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