GETTING RID OF MENTHOLS WILL SAVE BLACK LIVES!
In the past 20 years, menthol cigarettes have killed one million Black people. The tobacco industry is the biggest killer of Black men. They have racistly and perniciously targeted Black people for decades. They kill our people, while hijacking our legitimate fears and lived experiences of police brutality.
Rather than expose their funding of Black leadership organizations, the tobacco industry works silently behind the scenes with the sole goal of keeping their deadly products in our communities and hooking another generation of our children.
This proposed FDA rule is about cigarette manufacturers, i.e. the Tobacco Industry, who are federally adjudicated racketeers under Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes (a Department of Justice case that was led by a Black attorney, Sharon Y. Eubanks in 2006).
The community should also know that the Biden Administration is rolling out serious education and cessation resources that will benefit Black people. Tailored community-based cessation is a critical pillar of the Biden Administration’s Cancer Moonshot, a bold initiative to reduce cancer deaths by 50% by 2047.
WE DEMAND JUSTICE AND REPARATIONS FOR THE IRREPARABLE INTER-GENERATIONAL HARM THAT THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY HAD INFLICTED UPON THE BLACK COMMUNITY!
We need our community to know that Black people have been at the forefront of the movement to remove menthol cigarettes from the U.S. market. It will not be illegal to use or possess mentholated products.
500,000
African-American children started smoking
because of menthol cigarettes from 2009-2020
(FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee projection)
