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[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
The Biden administration has tried to ban cars, gas stoves and oil drilling, but there was only one ban that it backed off on after meeting something scarier than the Bill of Rights.
Biden retreated from a menthol cigarette ban after pressure from Al Sharpton.
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 letter to Susan Rice was tweeted out by former NAACP president Benjamin Chavis who added a video hashtagged “#mentholisnotacrime”.
“When you ban a product mostly sold in black communities – as 80% of black smokers prefer menthol cigarettes… you must consider the fairness of such an approach as well as the reality of what will happen to that very same overrepresented community in the criminal justice system,” the family members argued.
The critical race theory logic of disproportionate impact was being used to argue that banning Kool cigarettes was racist.
The new Black Cigarettes Matter campaign linked high-profile deaths that incited BLM race riots to cigarettes. The new Black Cigarettes Matter martyrs included Eric Garner, who died during a struggle with police after selling illegal cigarettes, Michael Brown, who was shot in self-defense after assaulting a local clerk who had caught him stealing cigars, and George Floyd, who died of a drug overdose after he was accused of buying cigarettes with a counterfeit bill.
If only racist regulators hadn’t targeted black tobacco products, they might still be alive.
The Black Cigarettes Matter campaign might seem strange, but the tobacco industry, lacking any other allies, had survived by building a wall around it made out of racial agitators willing to claim that anything was racist for the right amount of money.
Reynolds tobacco has been funding Sharpton’s National Action Network. And Sharpton has delivered by merging pro-crime arguments with a defense of its fundamental product. After a 2016 FDA ruling in favor of a menthol ban, Sharpton held meetings at black churches across the country titled “Decriminalizing the Black Community” arguing against a menthol ban.
The church meetings were dressed up in the rituals of BLM martyrdom and linked Ferguson to a ban on menthol cigarettes. There were chants of “No Justice, No Peace” and claims that cigarettes were an important civil rights issue.
This isn’t a new idea. Before the tobacco industry recruited Sharpton, it had been a major sponsor of the NAACP and linked up with Jesse Jackson.
“I’m not for sale to anybody. Jesse Jackson’s not for sale. John Jacob, Andrew Young, all the rest of the black leaders, Coretta Scott King, we’re not for sale. But if the tobacco companies want to give us some money to help us move black people forward, in the name of god give it,” NAACP boss Rev. Benjamin Hooks had barked at a 1990 dinner funded by a $100,000 check from Philip Morris. “Anybody that asks that question, you tell them they’re racist.”
The pitch hasn’t changed much since except that the NAACP, a shadow of its former self, has moved to the pro-ban side, while tobacco companies had moved on to trendier leaders.
Like Sharpton and random relatives of people killed in encounters with police.
How much money is involved? RJ Reynolds has been buying $15,000 tables at National Action Network events. “Ten thousand dollars or $15,000 would not influence us either way,” Sharpton argued. How much might was left unsaid. One pastor claims to have been offered $250,000 which sounds more like the kind of money that might bring the gang to the table.
Most people still think of tobacco companies as being old-fashioned, but like most corporations, they went woke. Except that wokeness in the tobacco industry is partly a matter of survival.
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.
The issue is not whether people ought to smoke: it’s the utility of race-baiting.
Racism and most elements of the leftist agenda are destructive at their worst and merely rent-seeking at their best. Blow up BLM and make it a national issue and companies will come to you looking to weaponize your ideology for their own corporate purposes. And Sharpton, like many other members of the “movement”, are happy to play rent-a-racist for the right buyer.
Some big tobacco companies had their roots in slave plantations, but while BLM rioters are beheading the statues of America’s founders, their corporate descendants bought up the racists to lobby for them. What Jesse Jackson and then Al Sharpton demonstrated was that the difference between being accused of racism and being able to accuse others of racism was a big check. Anyone can play the game as long as they write a check of the right size.
And then announce their commitment to ESG and DEI, but mostly to $$$.
Al Sharpton and the “movement” are not sincere crusaders against racial oppression, they’re hucksters who exploit racism because it makes their services more valuable to the companies that once used black slaves to harvest their product. It’s cynical, but no less cynical than the rest of the BLM movement which has spent years fighting each other over corporate cash.
BLM’s original organization is being sued by a splinter group, some of the family members of people killed in encounters with police have been agitating for their share of the cash, and despite massive corporate pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars, no one is sure where all the money went. Behind all the chants of Black Lives Matter, Black Cigarettes Matter because the truth is that Black Checks Matter most of all.
Yeah, that’s interesting. Even in the 1950s I noticed that they liked menthol cigarettes. I don’t know why.
Even in the 1950s there were some claims that cigarette smoking was healthy. It must have been in the 1960s that there started to be some public awareness that smoking was hazardous to health.
In the 1930s, you would see ads in the paper, “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.” You would see ads saying that a lawyer won a case because he was all simmered down after smoking a certain brand of cigarette.
In the late 40’s, my Mom had a doctor who told her, “start smoking” to lose that extra weight you gained after child birth…. (my older brother)… and she continued to smoke throughout her pregnancy with me in 61. Only side effect I think I got was a serious disdain for bureaucrats.
I don’t blame you.
Nicotine does quell the appetite, but is very bad for the heart. Those old ads of anything are fun to look at though ( 15c cigarette packs, new Chevy loaded with everything they had, $400), but much is just the way they tried to sell stuff, and seeing how much American culture has changed since those days. I might not be the sharpest spoon in the drawer, but I really didn’t need the Surgeon General to tell me inhaling smoke into my lungs was bad for me.
Americans used to be pretty savvy about advertising and packaging, because we were exposed to so much of it. No, that burger looks nothing like the one in the ad, and that toy that looks so exciting on the 30sec or one minute TV ad will bore you to tears in an hour. Most people then learned better before they learned to read.
The brain needs exercise and honing to be sharp. A person gets used to making their own decisions, and improving on them, when they have to do it every minute of every day and the benefits and consequences of their choices are on them. When that freedom is taken they lose that ability, and their children never gain it. We see that in freed communist countries. Those abilities and morality get lost because they’re actively stamped out in communism.
That’s also why losing is so important to creating a winner, and freedom is so important to learned ability, advancement, and prosperity. Sorry Miranda, you got me thinking and reflecting.
My mother was recommended to smoke by her doctor to enable her to overcome social anxiety. She ultimately died as a result of Congestive Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.
thats awful…. so sorry. No one should smoke My mother smoked so I guess. I sort of did in the womb. She never had respiratory or other cigarette related health problems but many people do. & Its not a pleasant experience
Nicotine didn’t help with that, but it could have just been tasty, and in earlier times, the healthiest food. I’m Southern, our favorite foods lead to that, so I limit my intake, but quality of life is a factor for me, along with longevity (absent violence). That wasn’t an issue back then because we were much more likely to die of something else until the latter half of the 20th century. First world problems are still the best ones to have.
Why would someone want to taste what a urinal cake smells like.
Don’t eat the big green mint in the urinal, lol..
So is Mr. Riot Integrator Sharpton going to start more looting for Maralboughs or Camels maybe a Pack of Kents
Al has people to do that for him. He’s broke, but wears $1500 suits and lives like a king.
Let them smoke tobacco, anyone who today, after decades of clear evidence that it causes death from lung cancer, if you smoke cigarettes today you are 100% dumb.
The upvote worked this time, yay! But it’s all a tradeoff, and often what should kill you isn’t what does you in. People are free to pursue happiness, as long as they are willing to live with the consequences of their decisions. They should be conscientious of what it does to their loved ones, but it’s their decisions to make.
This situation and article is hilarious. The “Reverend” Al will shuck and jive to any tune mammon plays.
Kool was iconic cig… even if menthols are nasty.
When I smoked, I smoked Newports- can I claim to “identify as black” like Rachel Dozelal?
My Mom smoked Carlton Menthol Lights for like 50+ years. Never any lung issues. But they tasted like smoking mint flavored cellophane…. I used to smoke Camel no-filters… when real coffin nails mattered.
Me too! I want money.
It’s your right! Your decisions are someone else’s fault. It’s the new way.
“… racial agitators willing to claim that anything was racist for the right amount of money….”
It’s known as a “self-feeding extortion loop”.
Fork over the money or face relentless online guilt-trips and threats of urban violence.
I’m not easy to guilt trip, and threats of violence tend to backfire spectacularly on me, but it’s worked well for al so far.
I am against banning cigarettes. People will just get them from bootleggers, the way they did booze during prohibition. I am also against people who have lost relatives to lung cancer being able to sue tobacco companies
Just don’t smoke. But to call banning an unhealtjy habit that affects a disproportionate number of Blacks racist? Does Sharpton want Blacks to get lung cancer?
Freedom, and acceptance of the consequences of your decisions. It’s the only free and just way. When they try to take or get you to give up the responsibility for your decisions, they’re also trying to take your freedom and choice. Funny how consistently the ‘pro-choice’ people try to take that from you.
BLM cares deeply about the dozen or so unarmed blacks killed by police annually, most of whom resemble George Floyd- obstreperous drug addicts with long criminal records, who are treated no worse than whites with similar histories and behaviors It cares not one whit about the 42,000 blacks killed annually in senseless internecine drug and gang violence within the black community.
Since race hustlers such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharption have long functioned primarily as shake down artists, it’s little wonder BLM sees an opportunity with tobacco companies that manufacture menthol cigarettes marketed primarily to blacks.
All those dead people put money in their bank account, or in al’s case, their standard of living. Works for them, eff the people they kill to get there.
Black Reefer Matters, too. The next step in Blue state Maryland’s legalization of recreational marijuana use is to assign additional distribution licenses to black people as reparations for white iniquities of the past. Blacks with a prior conviction for marijuana offenses have priority. In the interest of combating climate change, flu pandemics, white nationalism, Russian disinformation or whatever the faux crisis du jour might be, Democ-crats insist that their black minions smoke dope, not menthol Newports. Incidentally, those filtered Newport cancer sticks cost about $70.00 per highly taxed carton in Maryland.
Brand name cigarettes are about $90 in Oklahoma. Also I read the next big thing is that the drug companies are going to start selling magic mushrooms. The funny part is they will sell the mushrooms from your local pharmacy. Most those black owned pot shops will probably go out of business.
Smokers can go to the res and bypass taxes here in Fla but the police are always hanging around looking for ‘smugglers’ LOL.
I quit smoking, but I was told our Oklahoma Indians jacked up the price on cigarettes, to the point they are they same price as everyone else.
Marijuana wrecked a life very near and dear to mine.
I’m sorry to hear that Miranda, and I’m sure it happens. But for some people, it keeps them from wrecking their lives, and perhaps more importantly to them, the lives of others. For very aggressive people, it can be a moderation. I think some people should be forced to take it, just to stay out of prison, and for some it should be verbotten You’re right though, for many people it does a lot more harm than good.
Funny how the government makes more money off a pack of cigarettes or a gallon of gas than the people actually producing them. And funny how the seperation of church and state people, are the first to enact “sin taxes.”
Albert Einstein here. You know who is overrepresented in the criminal justice system? Criminals. You know what many have in common besides their crimes? Coming from homes in which a loving father is absent. Trivia: What is the name of “Reverend” Jesse Jackson’s love child? Herschel Walkers love children?
I doubt it Jessie Jackson knows the kid’s name.
Yes, but does jesse willingly support him, is he a father to him?
There was this Anti-Smoking commercial on TV showing aa man dumping his pack of Cigarettes off a bridge and into the water below crumbles up the pack and throws it away. He is a Litter Bug plan and simple and should have been sited and fined for Littering
AL SHARPTON, AS MUCH OF A DIVISIONIST AND HUCKSTER AS BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA!
BLM is following a business model where victimhood is the product while outrage is the marketing strategy. This was pioneered by veteran race hustler Al Sharpton.
During his heyday, Sharpton made appearances following an incident where there were racial implications to make inflammatory speeches. Once they poured petrol into the fire he just flew out of the place and used it to raise funds for ‘charity’.
Sharpton seems to have mostly used his charity to enrich himself and his family. Sharpton was also a tax dodger; in 2016, he personally owed over $3 million in federal taxes.
KARL SALZMANN
BLACKS LOOT STORES
IT’S PART OF THE BLM PLATFORM
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yH1ZaKzzOa8
I have reported previously how the Black Lives Matter Global Network has glorified foreign and domestic terrorists, cop killers, and Fidel Castro, and has taken actions both the Anti-Defamation League and International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance define as anti-Semitic: denial of the right of Israel to exist. The organization has also encouraged looting and other forms of civil unrest.
Does this mean cancer is now a civil right? Cool! (Pun intended…)
Or kool menthols, lol. My sense of humor is a bit twisted.
if blacks continue to kill one another which is instant , then cigarettes will kill them slower and in the end more of them . as most blacks vote for democrats who keep them down on the plantation , i say it’s a win win . the democrats won’t be able to count on their votes as fewer and fewer succumb to death and more blacks are the go to crowd for abortion . give them what they want and in the end they wont want what they get , well …. in theory .
That’s one way of looking at it, but wouldn’t you really prefer they learn and advance?
What a great article. So many just don’t see.
Remember Joe Camel? Back at the time some Nit-Wit Josh Sularman of the Violence Policy Center was comparing Joe Camel to the NRA,s Eddy Eagle Gun Safety Program. Sugarman just proved he was all mouth and no mind
WOW…. Just WOW!
The Reverend Al … the “reverend”? ….Al Sharpton. “Reverend” of WHAT?
If I only could get a $Dollar$ for the many millions of citizens that died of Lung Cancer and NEVER smoked in their lives . . .