I want to talk to you about how policing intersects with the community and how decisions that you make as legislators, as citizens, impact how we end up dealing with people on the streets. Harris organization, known as LEAP, said the push toward menthol bans is the latest iteration of the drug war except that it more than most laws you see these days is overtly racist. When asked about Reynolds Americans funding, LEAP said its message has been the same for two decades, and if someone wants to donate to us to say it, bully for them. But other Black advocacy groups, including the NAACP, applaud efforts to ban menthol cigarettes, saying that the tobacco industry is on a narrow quest for profit, and they have been killing us along the way. Tobacco-related cancers claim 40,000 Black lives each year, at a rate 17% higher than that for whites and 74% higher than for Asians and Latinos, according to most recent data
PMID: 84 SunL.YueH.FangH.LiR.LiS.WangJ.et al
Khan MS, Khan SU, Khan SU, Suleman M, Shan Ahmad RU, Khan MU, Tayyeb JZ, Crovella S, Harlina PW, Saeed S
Gateway to Smoking and Other Substances Research suggests that children who use e-cigarettes are more likely to transition to traditional cigarettes or experiment with other addictive substances
These substances include small particles that penetrate deeply into the lungs, as well as cancer-causing chemical substances 8
