A Heartbreaking Trap- Menthol, Flavors and our Kids with Ritney Castine

Big Tobacco works hard to addict young brains before the age of 21, and employs a host of strategies to attract our kids. I have recently been serving on the Rulemaking Advisory Committee for tobacco retail licensing in my own state of Oregon. It is interesting to be working on helping an unsafe product be sold more safely. I have been thinking a great deal about how so many tobacco products are targeted at kids, and how we can ensure the places they are sold do not attract kids to an unnecessary extent. Menthol in particular has been a scourge on many communities, and has been targeted in particular at black children and communities.

It is so important to understand the impact of flavored inhalational products that are targeted at children as well as the history of tobacco companies ingratiating themselves with the very communities whose children they are grooming to be lifelong consumers.

Ritney Castine joined me on the podcast to talk kids, tobacco, and flavors, and also about the time he had to lobby a smoking Senator and future President! He is the former Managing Director of Community and Youth Engagement at Truth Initiative, a Washington, DC-based public health organization and also the former Director of Youth Advocacy at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.He currently works with Center for Black Health and Equity, and is a fellow podcaster as a cohost of the Black Body Health podcast. He is the youth pastor at Trinity Church in Gonzales, LA, and and I dove into what we can do as parents, communities, and churches to help break free of tobacco.

I really appreciated Pastor Castine sharing his experience and perspective, from seeing the complex history of tobacco as one of the few industries to hire black Americans during Jim Crow, to meeting then Senator Obama to talk tobacco while the future President was struggling with his own relationship with tobacco. His description about the ways Big Tobacco fights back by hiring scientists, doctors, and members of the faith community are important warnings. This is a deep, complicated and very American issue that continues to plague us today. When he mentioned his grandmother’s death from heart disease worsened by tobacco, it brought to mind so many of my own patients. Every time I fill out a death certificate, I have to indicate whether tobacco use contributed to the cause of death, and it is always so devastating every time I have to say “Yes.” It is hard to think about the massive for-profit industry that preys on sickening and killing so many, and the business model that begins by hooking young brains, often with flavors. Remember that 90% of adult smokers began their addiction as teens. To help our whole community break free, we have to start with the kids.

To Do:

1- Advocate for flavor bans and menthol bans in your community. Often these can be done at the county level. I have advocated for this in my own county, and a neighboring county recently passed a flavor ban. Remember, Big Tobacco may show up in insidious ways to fight back, but don’t be intimidated.

2- Contact your members of Congress to continue to pressure the FDA to move forward with regulating mentholated tobacco and vape products. Learn more at Centerforblackhealth.org for more on the importance of a menthol ban and important history, or check out the Black Body Health podcast– episodes 4, 10 and 17 to learn more.

3- Talk to your kids about how flavored tobacco and vape products are designed to hook them. Learn more about how to have these conversations at Flavorshookkids.org. Maybe your kid would like to be a youth ambassador against tobacco in their peers.

4- Consider a donation to Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids or the Center for Black Health and Equity, who have been working to help keep kids and communities free of addiction.

5- If you are part of a faith community, consider engaging in a No Menthol Sunday next May to educate about tobacco’s toll on the sanctity of life and how Big Tobacco preys on many of the most vulnerable.