Original in Spanish: Cigarrillos mentolados y marketing
The other day, watching one of those standup clips, I gathered there’s a running trope that Black Americans smoke a brand I had never heard of in my life: Newport. I wish I could find you the clip but it was TikTok and there you can never bathe twice in the same river… the thing is, it was apparently hilarious that the standup guy had correctly guessed the Black guy smoked Newport.
Since I can’t live with a question bouncing around my head, I googled it and yes. Turns out 42% of Black American adults who smoke, smoke Newport, and 84% of the young ones.
What came next blew my mind.
Turns out the Newport people always understood crystal-clear that the worse life treats you, the more willing you are to leave your money on tobacco, alcohol and drugs. That thing about the rat experiment in the rat theme park.
The Newport people also knew that if you get hooked on tobacco before age 20 you’ll probably keep at it for many, many more years.
From the beginning, counterintuitive as it may seem, they set their target on poor kids. Then, identity-wise, since poor American kids tend to be Black: Black kids, as young as possible.
Back then there were no laws about these things.
Turns out they went around GIVING AWAY tobacco near parks and schools. SERIOUSLY. The marketing campaign with the best ROI in history. To this day those kids still smoke Newport, and their kids: even more.
On top of that, it turns out they made Newport menthol precisely for that, to be more attractive to children.
Because there has been a population smoking mostly menthol for so long, we have now been able to learn that menthol is much worse for your health, because they’ve seen significant differences in Black Americans. Don’t ask me differences in what.
And that’s why menthol is being banned everywhere now.
Dr. Mengele writes that story and it isn’t one bit harsher…
Any notes and corrections will be more than welcome. What I wrote here comes from 2-3 badly done searches and a lot of surprise. I want to learn more.
(Facebook, 2023-03-09)