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Give Big Tobacco, as they used to call it, some credit.
The most demonized industry in the country decided to protect itself from a ban by wrapping itself in DEI.
As I documented in “Black Cigarettes Matter”, tobacco companies brought in Al Sharpton, George Floyd’s ghost, and BLM.
Sharpton’s National Action Network claimed that banning menthol cigarettes would hurt black people and issued a press release stating that it had reached this position after “working with Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner” and serial BLM litigator Ben Crump.
During a previous attempt by New York to ban menthols, Sharpton had been thrown into the fight alongside Garner’s mother and George Floyd’s brother.
Last year, ‘Mothers of the Movement’ a group that included Carr, along with “Philonise Floyd” (a brother, not a mother), and Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, claimed that they had taken part in a panel at Sharpton’s NAA led by Crump and that banning menthol cigarettes was racist.
The old demonized companies remodeled and repainted their newly woke operations in rainbow colors and black power fists.
Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, announced a $5 million donation to fight “systemic racism” during the BLM race riots and claims that “inclusion, Diversity and Equity (ID&E) is embedded into everything we do.” The Marlboro cigarette manufacter has racial quotas for its executives for not only blacks, gays and Hispanics, but also to have 2% representation for “two spirit” men and women: a form of transgender identity supposedly grounded in Indian lore.
RJ Reynolds claims that “DE&I is an important part of our ESG strategy” and boasts of being listed by the Human Rights Campaign as one of the best places for gay people to work.
Did the strategy pay off? Ask Biden who just backed off a menthol ban for civil rights reasons.
The Biden administration has once again pushed back its plans to ban menthol cigarettes amid pressure from critics, including some civil rights leaders, who said it would unfairly target Black smokers.
“This rule has garnered historic attention and the public comment period has yielded an immense amount of feedback, including from various elements of the civil rights and criminal justice movement,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a Friday statement.
“It’s clear that there are still more conversations to have, and that will take significantly more time,” he added.
The issue is that if a company wants to buy off politicians, it can try bribing them directly or it can pay Sharpton to announce that a policy is racist.
I don’t support a ban, but I really don’t support companies being regulated based on how much money they invest in leftist identity politics movements.
Are menthol cigarettes any more or less dangerous once Sharpton endorsed them? Who knows. Not the ‘Party of Science’ which makes all of its decisions based on what BLM or Hamas in Dearborn, MI says.
Actual values, facts and priorities have no impact. Only leftist agitation does.
“If the Biden administration believed that Black lives matter, they would have ended the sale of menthol flavored cigarettes. Instead, they appear to be caving to Big Tobacco which has racistly targeted our community for decades,” Carol McGruder, co-chair of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, said. “Hundreds of thousands of Black Americans will die in the years to come because of today’s inaction. Shame on you, President Biden!”
It’s not about Biden, it’s about a party that is willing to commit any crime with the right identity politics rationale.
Tobacco companies found black leaders like Sharpton who will cry “racism” for cash. And that’s all that matters.
The moral of the story is it doesn’t matter whether your product kills people, including black people, what matters is how woke your company is.
Eco-Freaks want Humans to go the way of the Dodo although I would prefer, Great Auks Passenger Pigeons Heath Hens Carolina Parakeets and Labrador Ducks and Dodos Etc. over those idiots from those various Eco-Freak groups
Black Biden would suck the Devil’s dick and take a fiery facial on live TV if he thought it would him help him retain the black vote.
The devil’s dick, isn’t that what crack pipes are called?
That reminded me, stoners used to pass around a wine bottle and all drink from the same bottle. Imagine disease infected crackheads passing around a crack pipe and taking hits from it.
I still remember the wonderful black lady who took care of my neighbor’s house and kids smoked Salems (menthol) back in the 1950s. So menthol has been popular in that community for a long time. I don’t see what the attraction is though.
Cigarettes are vile period. I suppose menthol cigarettes are popular with blacks the same way certain foods are.
I read up a little on Salems. They were the first menthol cigarettes. “Take a Puff, its Springtime” was their advertising slogan 🙂
That’s funny. A forest fire in Springtime. The bad old days when it was legal to advertise the only substance known to cause cancer. They even advertised it to kids with Joe Camel!
My girlfriend smokes and can’t quit. It drives me nuts because I worry about her. She’s considerate enough to use a breath mint right before she sees me though, and then brushes her teeth.
Thanks Jeff! That reminded me, breath mints are a sign of a smoker 🙂
I smoked in 4th and 5th grade. Now I only smoke when I’m on fire.
I guess handing out free crack pipes wasn’t enough. No doubt the DEI shakedown was always the objective.
Government should get out of the business of telling us how to live our lives. It’s none of their business if we smoke cigarettes or do anything else.
The nanny state is ironic considering how its pushing child “gender switching” and grooming, not to mention EPA regulations, global climate warming change, electric vehicles and the rest. And who can forget the scamdemic?
Once they took over health care, it became their business. Freedom is inseperable from responsibility. Once they were allowed to assume the responsibility, they got the right to make those decisions.
If you’ve been paying attention to drug ads in recent years, you’ve probably noticed how utterly PC they’ve become. For example, in response to the left’s war against “fat shaming”, drug ads are now full of overweight people doing that obligatory style of jive dancing in clinics and in the middle of the street. I think this is at least partly intended to keep the government off their backs.
So now the Biden crooks are saying, well, black people want menthol cigarettes, and we need the black vote, so we won’t deny them that pleasure even though it is killing them.
I don’t ever want to hear again that we need to pity black people for their excessive lung cancer rates, and provide extra ‘special’ black-only resources for their care. The government doesn’t give a you-know-what, and allows the sale of the product in exchange for votes. It is all on black people, period.
I believe it also has to do with the amt of money that the govt makes in the sale of tobacco products. Rush Limbaugh spoke to this years ago pointing out the connecting of tobacco companies and the ‘powers that be’. I cannot articulate or elaborate as Rush did ( who can?), but it is what I always think of when the subject comes up.
Like with booze and gasoline, the government makes more money off them than the companies providing them.