As of May 20, 2020, the sale of menthol cigarettes and rolling tobacco is banned across the European Union. This decision follows the 2014 EU Tobacco Products Directive. Often known only as a flavoring, menthol is a powerful addictive substance that, by reducing the pungent and irritating taste of tobacco, makes it easier for young people to start smoking.<\/p>\n
Due to its characteristics, menthol also allows the smoker to take deeper, longer puffs, and increases the absorption and diffusion of nicotine in the body. In other words, menthol makes it easier to start smoking and harder to quit. The traditional association of menthol with the medical and health world makes menthol tobacco all the more dangerous: the consumer underestimates the real dangers involved, believing they are smoking a less harmful product. This myth was knowingly spread and maintained by the tobacco industry, which emphasized the health dimension to launch its menthol products in the late 1920s.<\/p>\n
The tobacco industry sees menthol as an extremely effective marketing tool to attract younger generations to smoking. Even today, more than four out of five smokers in the United States started smoking with flavored products.<\/p>\n
Minorities in general are also a priority target for tobacco companies for menthol products, such as women, the LGBT community, and African Americans in the United States. Through extremely effective campaigns, the tobacco industry has, for example, successfully integrated menthol into African-American culture. In the United States, nearly 90% of African-American smokers smoke menthol, compared to less than 30% of whites.<\/p>\n
Around the world, tobacco companies consistently oppose any regulation of menthol. In the European Union, the tobacco industry launched an intense lobbying effort against the EU Tobacco Products Directive, resulting in a four-year delay in banning menthol sales.<\/p>\n
The latter only applies to cigarettes and rolling tobacco. To prevent a shift in consumption to cigars, cigarillos, heated tobacco, or e-cigarettes, it is essential that this regulation be extended to all of these products, which are particularly attractive to younger generations.<\/p>\n
To read our analysis of the marketing use of menthol:<\/p>\n