Black Cigarettes Matter
12th December 2023
“When you ban a product mostly sold in black communities – as 80% of black smokers prefer menthol cigarettes… you must consider the fairness of such an approach as well as the reality of what will happen to that very same overrepresented community in the criminal justice system,” the family members argued.
The critical race theory logic of disproportionate impact was being used to argue that banning Kool cigarettes was racist.
G. Gordon Liddy mentions, in his autobiography, WILL, that when he was in the D.C. jail after being arrested for the Watergate burglary, the basic unit of currency for black-,market transactions in the jail (which was apparently overwhelmingly Felons of Color) was a ‘box’, a carton of Kool cigarettes.