All the zoomers are smoking Kools. Look it up

Defending cigarette companies’ ability to target black people is not a woke take. Black people don’t prefer menthol cigarettes because it is inherently part of black identity. Black people mostly smoke menthol cigarettes because cigarette companies spent decades manipulating black people to smoke menthol cigarettes through targeted advertisements, free cigarettes to children, and co-opting social movements.

Thinking that having a commodity targeted towards you is some kind of advantage or freedom is such a lib-brain thought. Freedom is not the ability to choose between products. You are not the commodities that you consume. You are doing reification. The menthol cigarette ban is not intended to harm black people. It does not take away their ability to smoke cigarettes. The menthol cigarette ban is intended to reduce the number of ways that exploitative cigarette companies target oppressed groups in society.

Here’s a clip from Adam Curtis’s Century of the self where he describes how cigarette companies in 1929 co-opted feminist movements to manipulate women into smoking cigarettes.

I think the measure is more targeted at preventing people from starting smoking. The menthol apparently alters how you process nicotine, and studies have shown menthol cigarettes to be more addictive by themselves, even ignoring the whole marketing aspect.