Steady rise in Menthol cigarette smoking not by chance but due to organized advertising campaign

The tremendous popularity of menthol cigarettes over the past few decades was not by chance, but rather the deliberate purpose of major tobacco firms' sleazy, deceptive, and sometimes racist advertising operations, according to a thorough new research.

Researchers set out a thorough road map in a new paper from the Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising (SRITA) group, a spinoff of Stanford Medicine, and the American Heart Association (AHA), based in part on internal records from the tobacco corporations themselves, demonstrating that the continuous growth in the usage of menthol cigarettes was caused by clever advertising targeted at young people, women, and Black Americans.

According to Robert K. Jackler and his team, the big tobacco corporations that manufacture menthol cigarettes coordinated the menthol cigarette industry through their marketing campaigns.

Jackler emphasized that while the US Food and Drug Administration is considering its proposal to ban menthol cigarettes from the market, this isn't ancient history either and that Big Tobacco's deceptive tactics still exist today. According to another research, the association's campaign against tobacco use originates from the fact that smoking is a significant and modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), accounting for around one out of every four deaths from cardiovascular causes. The researcher said that this is in addition to the fact that it also causes other malignancies outside lung cancer.

Users, particularly those who are just starting to use cigarettes, e-cigarettes, or other products, find menthol to be incredibly seductive and alluring. It has an attraction for both adults and kids and unquestionably makes it harder for those who wish to quit to do so. That represents a sizable portion of the population who smoke cigarettes and use e-cigarettes. While some people don't want to stop, many do and discover that they can't.

The FDA put up new regulations in April banning the sale of flavored cigars/cigarillos and menthol cigarettes. The elimination of menthol products aims to make these cigarettes less appealing to teenagers and young adults and less likely for current non-users to start smoking. Menthol in cigarettes has already been outlawed in a large number of nations, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the whole European Union.

Reference: 

Jackler, R. K., Ramamurthi, D., Willett, J., Chau, C., Muoneke, M. N., Zeng, A., Chang, M., Chang, E., Bahk, J. R., Ramakrishnan, A., & Sewall, A. (2022). ADVERTISING CREATED & CONTINUES TO DRIVE THE MENTHOL TOBACCO MARKET: Methods used by the industry to target youth, women, & black Americans. https://tobacco-img.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/02234723/SRITA-AHA-MentholAdvertising.pdf