“According to the American Lung Association, the use of menthol cigarettes is highest among Black, brown and LGBTQ+ communities. Medical groups like the American Lung Association have long advocated for menthol cigarettes to be banned because they can make it easier to start smoking and disproportionately affect minority communities.”
Gonna save the minorities from the opression of racism and homophobia by specifically targeting them with a ban.
I’ve never really understood references to “the left eating itself” until I hit that paragraph. The absolute irony of the anti racist/homophobe sentiment being so overtly racist/homophobic kinda made the light bulb come on.
This adverse thing is adverse, so in order to reduce adversity among minorities, we’ll target the specific option they tend towards… to reduce discrimination against them, by discriminating their specific choice. Discriminating against them… to reduce discrimination…
And then you publish that shit? That’s kinda fucked IMHO.
Huh I mean I get what you’re saying but can’t we just take this potential win? I’m a cancer survivor and it just seems weird to complain about legislation that will reduce cancer. Menthol cigarettes just make it easier to get cancer than plain ones. That’s how I see this. Just because minorities and lgbtq are more likely to use them doesn’t mean it’s racist.
I just wish it was banned in public because I choose to not put poison in my body, yet I have to inhale everyone else’s poison that they are ingesting near me. In public and in cars is where I wish it was banned. There’s nothing worse than being stuck behind someone in traffic that is smoking and you have nowhere to go and nothing to do except inhale that shit.
what a wanker take on it, cigarettes should be banned period, they do nothing good for anyoneand are an absolute blight for public health. Any step in making cigarettes worse for accessibility, as marginal as it is, is a step in the right the right direction. People who smoked in France had the same take when they upped the cigarette prices “ooooh it won’t stop the poor people smoking blah blah” “they’re just doing it for the money they don’t care about poor people it will just hurt the common man more”. Welll cookie it turns out that 10€ has forced a lot of people to stop and greatly reduced young people who start smoking in the first place. Granted now people have shifted to vaping but compared to cigarettes they’re heaven. You can’t even compare vaping to smoking.
So it’s totally fine to target minorities with a ban if it means forward progress in disincentivising tobacco use? I disagree on the ends justifying the means in this case.
No arguments at all on the merits of reducing tobacco use, just an objection to throwing minorities under the bus in pursuit of it. I would not actually object to taxation as a means. I wouldn’t object to an outright ban even. My objection is to the specificity to minorities… that’s not cricket…
imagine a situation women drank more alcohol than men and then the government banned alcohol for everyone. So you would consider this bad because it’s immoral to impose any kind of ban on women?
So what then? Ban it for the rich, the middle class and white people and let the people at risk smoke themselves to death ?
Where are your morals in this ? Put down your ideologies for one second and be pragmatic.
If they banned all alcohol for everyone, its indiscriminate, and I would not consider it to be discrimination (I’d consider it a bad idea based on the obvious). In your example, a ban on wine, but not whiskey, with the publicly stated intention of reducing alcohol intake among women, would be the equivalent, and I’d absolutely consider that misogynistic. In the case of a wine ban, yes, it would be immoral to impose that ban, because it would be targeted at women specifically.
They aren’t banning cigarettes. They’re banning menthols, and the publicly stated intent is to affect use of cigarettes among minorities. The policy is specifically intended to affect a demographic. Not because I say so, or because I think it does… it’s what they’re citing as the basis of the policy… they published it as such.
The pragmatic solution is to ban cigarettes. That would still affect the minorities disparately, but it’s no longer an inherently racist proposal at that point, because it’s about tobacco use period, not just the tobacco use specific to the minorities.
Well agreed that they should ban all cigarettes. in the end this is a half arsed solution that they came up with to “help” minorities.
But to be honest, I’ve seen too many people die to tobacco. I don’t care if the proposal is racist or not. Anything that can merely annoy a smoker’s smoking habits for me is a step in the right direction.
“According to the American Lung Association, the use of menthol cigarettes is highest among Black, brown and LGBTQ+ communities. Medical groups like the American Lung Association have long advocated for menthol cigarettes to be banned because they can make it easier to start smoking and disproportionately affect minority communities.”
Gonna save the minorities from the opression of racism and homophobia by specifically targeting them with a ban.
I’ve never really understood references to “the left eating itself” until I hit that paragraph. The absolute irony of the anti racist/homophobe sentiment being so overtly racist/homophobic kinda made the light bulb come on.
This adverse thing is adverse, so in order to reduce adversity among minorities, we’ll target the specific option they tend towards… to reduce discrimination against them, by discriminating their specific choice. Discriminating against them… to reduce discrimination…
And then you publish that shit? That’s kinda fucked IMHO.
Huh I mean I get what you’re saying but can’t we just take this potential win? I’m a cancer survivor and it just seems weird to complain about legislation that will reduce cancer. Menthol cigarettes just make it easier to get cancer than plain ones. That’s how I see this. Just because minorities and lgbtq are more likely to use them doesn’t mean it’s racist.
It’s my body; I get to decide what goes in it. Poison or not. This isn’t a win at all.
I just wish it was banned in public because I choose to not put poison in my body, yet I have to inhale everyone else’s poison that they are ingesting near me. In public and in cars is where I wish it was banned. There’s nothing worse than being stuck behind someone in traffic that is smoking and you have nowhere to go and nothing to do except inhale that shit.
Menthol cigarettes are what are consumed by teens as well. Banning the sale of them is a restriction on teen smoking.
what a wanker take on it, cigarettes should be banned period, they do nothing good for anyoneand are an absolute blight for public health. Any step in making cigarettes worse for accessibility, as marginal as it is, is a step in the right the right direction. People who smoked in France had the same take when they upped the cigarette prices “ooooh it won’t stop the poor people smoking blah blah” “they’re just doing it for the money they don’t care about poor people it will just hurt the common man more”. Welll cookie it turns out that 10€ has forced a lot of people to stop and greatly reduced young people who start smoking in the first place. Granted now people have shifted to vaping but compared to cigarettes they’re heaven. You can’t even compare vaping to smoking.
So it’s totally fine to target minorities with a ban if it means forward progress in disincentivising tobacco use? I disagree on the ends justifying the means in this case.
No arguments at all on the merits of reducing tobacco use, just an objection to throwing minorities under the bus in pursuit of it. I would not actually object to taxation as a means. I wouldn’t object to an outright ban even. My objection is to the specificity to minorities… that’s not cricket…
Yes it is in the case of tobacco usage.
imagine a situation women drank more alcohol than men and then the government banned alcohol for everyone. So you would consider this bad because it’s immoral to impose any kind of ban on women?
So what then? Ban it for the rich, the middle class and white people and let the people at risk smoke themselves to death ?
Where are your morals in this ? Put down your ideologies for one second and be pragmatic.
If they banned all alcohol for everyone, its indiscriminate, and I would not consider it to be discrimination (I’d consider it a bad idea based on the obvious). In your example, a ban on wine, but not whiskey, with the publicly stated intention of reducing alcohol intake among women, would be the equivalent, and I’d absolutely consider that misogynistic. In the case of a wine ban, yes, it would be immoral to impose that ban, because it would be targeted at women specifically.
They aren’t banning cigarettes. They’re banning menthols, and the publicly stated intent is to affect use of cigarettes among minorities. The policy is specifically intended to affect a demographic. Not because I say so, or because I think it does… it’s what they’re citing as the basis of the policy… they published it as such.
The pragmatic solution is to ban cigarettes. That would still affect the minorities disparately, but it’s no longer an inherently racist proposal at that point, because it’s about tobacco use period, not just the tobacco use specific to the minorities.
Well agreed that they should ban all cigarettes. in the end this is a half arsed solution that they came up with to “help” minorities.
But to be honest, I’ve seen too many people die to tobacco. I don’t care if the proposal is racist or not. Anything that can merely annoy a smoker’s smoking habits for me is a step in the right direction.
That’s the tiny hill I’m willing to die on.
I’d agree with you if it was a blanket ban on cigarettes, but it isn’t. It’s targeted.