San Francisco's flavored tobacco ban appears to have passed. Somewhat less discussed, San Francisco's ban includes mentholated tobacco products as part of the ban.
The complicated history of specialty marketing of mentholated tobacco products to African-Americans is reviewed here. It is also significant that an estimated 85 percent of all African American smokers use mentholated tobacco products.
The long history of how African-Americans became marketing magnets for the cooler smoke and then, disproportionately, heavy users of mentholated tobacco products raises important questions about freedom. Big Tobacco's big San Francisco gamble to argue that the freedom to smoke and the freedom to use mentholated products that enable deeper inhalation and, quite possibly, more addictive tobacco use appears to have moved relatively few in San Francisco.
Missouri State of Mind 