U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla joined a coalition of parents, students, state officials, and public health advocates in launching a historic campaign on Thursday morning to ban the sale of candy-flavored tobacco, including minty menthol cigarettes.
In their "Yes to Protect California's Kids Campaign", the coalition led by the American Heart Association, American Lung Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, Parents Against Vaping e-Cigarettes, and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids urges voters to vote yes on the November ballot.
Just months ago, California passed a law to stop the sale of candy-flavored tobacco products. According to the coalition, Big Tobacco spent tens of millions of dollars getting their referendum on the Nov.8 ballot to overturn a bipartisan law that bans candy-flavored e-cigarettes, including minty-menthol cigarettes, and cheap sweet cigars.
“It is us versus Big Tobacco. We are in the fight to protect the health and well-being of our children,” Padilla said.
Padilla said tobacco companies are “increasingly aggressive” in marketing their products to youth using candy-like flavors, masking the harsh flavors of traditional tobacco, and disguising the "strong hits of highly addictive nicotine e-cigarettes provide".
“Candy flavored nicotine is what gets young people hooked. That is why we face an e-cigarette epidemic in California and across the country; this is an epidemic of unprecedented proportions,” Padilla said.
A national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) and The U.S. Food and Drug Administration(FDA) found over 2 million U.S. teens use e-cigarettes regularly.
“As a mother, I know deep in my heart that every one of our children deserves the right to grow up without the deadly influence of Big Tobacco," Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis said. "This is the fight that will bring us together because public health is not political, or at least it shouldn't be."
The U.S. Surgeon General dubbed youth e-cigarettes use as an epidemic as one in five high school students and one in 20 middle school students, currently use e-cigarettes.
Malia Cohen, Chair of the Board of Equalization and co-chair of the Tobacco-Free Kids campaign said “this is a critical issue”, emphasizing how the industry has not changed its tactics that lure youth. Cohen introduced legislation banning the sale of flavored tobacco products in 2017 as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
A few years later, Sen.Jerry Hill authored Senate Bill 793 in 2020, being the landmark legislation that put an end to the sale of most flavored tobacco products across California.
“We prevailed against a massive tobacco industry, a machine of mistruths. They are just un-ending in the fight, and now we are gearing up to protect that progress and most importantly to protect lives,” Hill said.
Tobacco companies have spent the last six decades spending tens of millions of dollars marketing minty sweet menthol cigarettes specifically to black and brown communities. According to Bechara Choucair, MD is senior vice president and chief health officer for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, 85 percent of all Black smokers use menthol, which has caused the premature death of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans.
“We know that we're in a David and Goliath battle,” said Carol McGruder, Co-Chairperson for the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council. “We are in the fight to save the lives of the 45,000 Black souls who die every year from tobacco-induced diseases. This is more than every other form of preventable death combined in the past two decades.”
The African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, along with Action on Smoking and Health filed a lawsuit on June 17, 2020, against the FDA for their inaction on taking menthol off the market. According to McGruder, the lawsuit, which is still in progress, was joined by the American Medical Association as our nation's doctors and the National Medical Association.
McGruder said the lawsuit compelled the FDA to respond to citizens' petition and had been found previous to our lawsuit. It is slated to enter the rule-making process this year.
