(Taylor Media Services) — A group of Black leaders gathered in California recently to call on tobacco companies to stop targeting their communities with menthol cigarettes and what they labeled “deceptive advertising.”
While menthol cigarettes are not unhealthier than other cigarettes, anti-smoking activists say the mint flavor makes them easier to smoke and more quickly leads to nicotine addiction.
However, for reasons which are not entirely clear, only 30 percent of white smokers prefer menthol cigarettes while they are the choice of better than 70 percent of African-American smokers.
Spokeswoman and attorney Sharon Eubanks charged, “The tobacco industry has been targeting the African-American community for decades with deceptive ads and pushing menthol cigarettes …these cigarettes are harder to quit and make it easier for youth to take up smoking.”
Also present at the gathering in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park was Rev. Anthony Evans, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Black Church Initiative. The activists were in Los Angeles to attend a tobacco control conference: “A Community Under Siege: The State of California and Tobacco Use.”
