Tobacco companies advertise more and have lowered the price of menthol cigarettes in California stores near high schools with large African American student populations, according to a new report from the Stanford School of Medicine.
An overwhelming majority – 86 percent, according to the National Cancer Institute – of African American smokers prefer the minty flavor of menthol cigarettes. Tobacco companies are capitalizing on this, the Stanford team said.
"The tobacco companies went out of their way to argue to the Food & Drug Administration that they don't use racial targeting," Lisa Henriksen of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, said in a statement. "This evidence is not consistent with those claims."
Henrikson's team randomly selected convenience stores, small markets and places selling cigarettes within easy walking distance of 91 schools in 2006.
In what they call “predatory” marketing patterns geared at young blacks, the researchers found the proportion of menthol cigarette advertisements increased by 5.9 percentage points as the proportion of black students increased by 10 percentage points. Additionally the odds of an advertised discount on Newport cigarettes – the leading brand of menthol cigarettes – were 1.5 times greater.
The average per-pack price for Newport was $4.37 in 2006, but for every 10 percentage point increase in the number of black students, the per-pack price for Newport decreased by 12 cents. For every 10 percentage point increase in the proportion of a neighborhood residents ages 10 to 17, the proportion of menthol advertisements increased by 11.6 percentage points. The odds an advertised discount was for Newport was 5.3 times greater.
"When kids are exposed to more cigarette advertising they are more likely to start smoking, which will undoubtedly lead to dire health consequences," Dr. Stephen Fortmann, a professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford,Fortmann said in a statement. "Our study finds that tobacco companies are trying to make smoking more attractive to teens, when we as a society should be doing just the opposite."
The FDA was given the authority to regulate the tobacco industry in 2009, when President Obama signed the Tobacco Control Act. In 2009, the agency banned companies from selling flavored tobacco products – including chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and clove flavored cigarettes – to deter children from lighting up. But the agency did not ban menthol cigarettes, which are preferred by about 30 percent of smokers overall.
Earlier this year the agency proposed banning menthols. The Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Committee, who reviewed the issue for the FDA, released a report that said “taking menthol cigarettes off the market would benefit public health,” because menthol cigarettes are more addictive than other cigarettes. Despite the research, the panel failed to recommend the agency ban menthols.
Tobacco industry representatives contend menthol cigarettes are not more addictive and are not more harmful than non-flavored cigarettes. A report published in the March issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that people who preferred menthol cigarettes smoked fewer cigarettes per day than those who smoked regular cigarettes.
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