US may ban tasty cigarettes

Cigarette Bill Treats Menthol With Leniency

By STEPHANIE SAUL
Published: May 13, 2008

Some public health experts are questioning why menthol, the most widely used cigarette flavoring and the most popular cigarette choice of African-American smokers, is receiving special protection as Congress tries to regulate tobacco for the first time.

The legislation, which would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to oversee tobacco products, would try to reduce smoking’s allure to young people by banning most flavored cigarettes, including clove and cinnamon.

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The reason menthol is seen as politically off limits, despite those concerns, is that mentholated brands are so crucial to the American cigarette industry. They make up more than one-fourth of the $70 billion American cigarette market and are becoming increasingly important to the industry leader, Philip Morris USA, without whose lobbying support the legislation might have no chance of passage.

“I would have been in favor of banning menthol,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, who supports the bill. “But as a practical matter that simply wasn’t doable.”

Before anyone says "It will never happen, there's too much money in the cigarette industry", plz note that Phillip Morris is supporting this legislation. This has apparently been underway for a while, but somehow I only just now became aware of it. The Netherlands are banning a great many psychoactive mushrooms (including amanita muscaria and amanita pantherina), Britain is upgrading the legal status of cannabis, Kansas has banned datura stramonium - the dominant worldwide trends in drug policy are depressing the fuck out of me.