• Gargantu8@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Huh I mean I get what you’re saying but can’t we just take this potential win? I’m a cancer survivor and it just seems weird to complain about legislation that will reduce cancer. Menthol cigarettes just make it easier to get cancer than plain ones. That’s how I see this. Just because minorities and lgbtq are more likely to use them doesn’t mean it’s racist.

    • stonedemoman@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nah, this ban accomplishes absolutely nothing except producing more expensive alternatives that do the exact same thing.

      I’m glad you survived your battle, but this ban would only serve to disproportionately affect the poor.

          • Gargantu8@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Thanks so much! All thanks to my anonymous stem cell donor via BeTheMatch! Other treatments didn’t work before that and this person saved my life.

    • kungen@feddit.nu
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      1 year ago

      Menthol cigarettes just make it easier to get cancer than plain ones.

      Were you a smoker, and did you ever smoke menthols? Menthols give a bit different feeling, but I wouldn’t say it’s that much “easier” to smoke.

      The EU did the same thing to ban menthols a couple years ago, and yet I can still go to the store and buy cigarettes with menthol taste. These new fake-menthols surprisingly feel even smoother to smoke than classic menthols, but it’s still not a big difference compared to unflavored cigarettes IMO.

      • TauZero@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Menthol makes it easier to start smoking, to continue being a smoker for longer than the person would have done otherwise, and to smoke more, because it makes smoking less irritating and tastes better. You are correct in that the menthol molecule itself is not a carcinogen.

        • kungen@feddit.nu
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          1 year ago

          Do you have a source for these claims? No one is smoking cigarettes for the taste, nor is “bad taste” a common reason for anyone to quit. Smoking is both a chemical addiction (nicotine and such) and a psychological habit (place and timing, having something in the mouth, forced breathing exercises, etc).

          If we really wanted to hinder big tobacco, they’d start requiring producers to document all their ingredients, additives, and processing methods.

          • Anticorp
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            1 year ago

            Exactly. It’s all about money & control and it always has been. If they wanted to get people to stop smoking, they’d mandate that the tobacco companies remove all of the chemicals from cigarettes that make the nicotine a free base form to increase their addictive properties.

              • Anticorp
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                1 year ago

                Nic Salts are the free base equivalent of cigarettes for the vaping world, but I agree that it’s a lot less harmful. The government would endorse vaping if they truly wanted to end smoking, since it has an incredibly high success rate as a smoking cessation device, like orders of magnitude higher than any other form. All of the other cessation methods (which are owned by the tobacco companies BTW), have a max success rate of about 3.5%. Vaping has a success rate of almost 70%! So yeah, their opposition to vaping makes my point even more clear.

        • Anticorp
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          1 year ago

          No it doesn’t. It’s purely a preference. There are tons of smokers who can’t stand menthols but love regular cigarettes. I even know someone who smokes menthols because he said it makes people less likely to bum cigarettes off of him.

          • Eatsuki@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I even know someone who smokes menthols because he said it makes people less likely to bum cigarettes off of him.

            That’s why I switched to menthols back when I smoked. That, and I just liked them more. I didn’t like the ultra menthol ones like Kools or Benson & Hedges, but Marlboro Milds were just about perfect, and the amount of “Oh…those are menthol? Nevermind” was the cherry on top.