Breaking Menthol

Banning menthol and other flavored cigarettes is on the to-do list for the FDA. You may have heard this already (and heard this all before), but this declaration has caused some breath-taking (no pun intended) reactions, revelations, and discussions. This ban focuses on menthol cigarettes, and it remains to be seen if this will affect all smoking methods and flavors. One woman’s experience with menthol (she calls it “the dance”) represents one of the faces of menthol addiction and the pull it has on smokers who go there.

“We don’t smoke that s_ _ _. We just sell it. We reserve the right to smoke for the young, the poor, the black and stupid.”

-R. J. Reynolds (incidentally, he didn’t smoke)

I came from a household of smokers. Mom and her husband both smoked. Menthol. At the time, smokers and non-smokers shared the same space, without interference or interruption from general welfare. My best friend Mickey’s Mom smoked too, but Mickey’s stepdad lived totally clean. Mickey’s Mom smoked non menthol. Either way, whichever house we were at, Mickey and I were used to being in a constant cloud of smoke.

My Mom was as flawed as any other human, but the one thing she was not was a hypocrite. She would urge me not to take up smoking – she called it the “Monkey on her back” – one that never let her rest from her habit since she started at only 11 years old. She worked very hard to make sure that I understood where life may take me and tried to prepare me the best she could to make informed decisions. That’s why she told me that if I did decide to smoke later in my life, I was to be solely responsible for all costs involved – financial and otherwise.

“Younger adult smokers are the only source of replacement smokers… If younger adults turn away from smoking, the industry must decline.”

-R. J. Reynolds

Despite my environment, I made it my entire childhood without smoking. When I was 24 and out of my mother’s house for the first time, I survived an attempted murder (one of many fears a loving parent has when their child moves away). At the time, I was living with roommates, one of whom was a young woman who smoked. When I came home from the hospital, my pain wasn’t only physical. My roommate offered me the only thing she knew that calm her own nerves. She demonstrated with one of her own before handing me one. I put it to my lips. As she lit it and told me to inhale, I could immediately feel the burn in my chest. The burn took me by surprise, and I choked, rattling my lungs and the contusions I had suffered from the attack. A sane person would’ve stopped at that point.

“The fragile, developing self-image of the young person needs all the support and enhancement it can get. Smoking may appear to enhance that self-image.”

-1973 RJR draft paper

Throughout my relationship-turned-marriage - all 17 years - I continued to smoke (and by now also developed a heavy drinking habit). And I was still a smoker when I packed up my home office, my dog and myself into my car and ran from him, returning once again to Mom’s house to reassess my life and figure out how to begin again. Even lacking the financial stability I ran from, I continued my dance down tobacco lane, using the little money I had left over from my meager savings as a former housewife. Quitting drinking was the easy part. Still, Mom never judged. She’s a good woman. I don’t tell her that enough.

Family tragedy prompted me to return to the state my dog and I had abandoned just less than a year before. By this time, I had gotten my settlement from the prenup and a part-time job I could do from my computer. These let me rent out hotel rooms that would allow my four-legged companion to stay with me. That worked until it didn’t.

Lost my job, ran out of money, was sleeping in my car and made the difficult decision to place my puppy girl with a foster pet guardian. I was sinking fast, bitter, alone, scared. Well, I wasn’t totally alone…

You ever heard the phrase “right place, right time?” Yeah, that. The job I ended up with didn’t pay nearly as well as the computer one did, but it let me rent out a room in a house. With two heavy smokers. While there were more than plenty of conflicts between us all, there was one common bond that let us tolerate each other over the course of a cigarette or two. Or four or five, as the case may be. If you’ve never smoked, good for you – please stay the course! Speaking from my experiences, here’s what you (didn’t) miss:

• You find yourself persistently in the company of fellow smokers

• Smoking habits always have a backstory

• No matter how low your financial resources are, you become very resourceful in acquiring your dance partners (beg, borrow, steal, etc.)

• You’re oblivious to how non-smokers are affected, or maybe don’t even care

I’m not sure if smokers ever have friends. Like, real friends. Social smoking when out at a bar or a club gives a sense of camaraderie, but what happens when one or more from that group quits? Ooh, ooh, I know this one!

I eventually found my motivation to quit five years ago and never looked back. Most of the people I knew fell away, but that’s alright. I feel that I’m better for quitting. I have more time, more money, my asthma has abated, and my chronic bronchitis is less chronic. When I work, I’m able to go an entire shift without having to take an urgent respite with a menthol dance partner. Even when I have the occasional drink, I just want the drink. Dance partner no longer required.

L.D., Los Angeles

References:

Column: Smokers may resist effort to ban menthols. ‘It’s going to make a lot of people mad.’ (Chicago Tribune)

Ban menthol cigs to protect our kids: Stop using flavors to create more addicts (NY Daily News)

FDA promises to move to ban menthol in cigarettes, flavored cigars within a year (MSN/Washington Post)

FDA Moves To Ban Cigarettes And Flavored Cigars (NPR)

Tobacco Executive Quotes (the 8ighty 4our)