Menthol cigarettes now account for more than one-quarter of all cigarettes sold in the U.S. In fact, menthols — often described as “cooling,” “soothing,” and “smooth” — make up a growing share of the shrinking cigarette market. Between 2004 and 2008, the percentage of adult smokers who smoked them increased from 30 percent to 34 percent.Experts say that menthol cigarettes’ minty flavor makes them more appealing to young people, more addictive, and harder to quit than regular cigarettes.

Menthol is the “ultimate candy flavoring,” says Phillip Gardiner, a researcher at the University of California’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, in Oakland.

The Food and Drug Administration hasn’t yet decided on whether it agrees. When the FDA was given the authority to regulate tobacco products in 2009, the agency banned cigarettes with flavors such as chocolate and fruit, because candy-like cigarettes are more attractive to kids. But menthol escaped the cut.Since then, tobacco and public health experts have said that menthols should be banned, too — or at least regulated more strictly. The FDA’s new tobacco advisory committee is currently sifting through the evidence.

Short of an outright ban on menthol cigarettes, the FDA may decide to regulate their marketing and even the menthol content. The FDA committee has scheduled a second meeting on the matter in mid-July, although the committee’s final recommendation isn’t due until March 2011.But are menthols really worse than non-menthol cigarettes? The committee’s task won’t be an easy one. The opinions that physicians, public health experts, and tobacco executives have regarding menthol cigarettes seem to be stronger than the research supporting them.

Menthol ads target black community

Tobacco company representatives have maintained that menthol cigarettes are no more or less addictive and harmful than other brands on the market — although they are quick to acknowledge that all cigarettes are addictive and potentially deadly.”The clear, science-based judgment must be that menthol cigarettes are not more harmful than non-menthol cigarettes,” William True, Ph.D., the senior vice president of research at the Lorillard Tobacco Company, told the FDA committee in March. “A menthol cigarette is, well, just another cigarette, and should be treated no different.” (Lorillard is the maker of Newport cigarettes, the most popular menthol brand in the U.S.)

The debate over whether menthols are more addictive and harmful than regular cigarettes is complicated by cultural and racial factors. Since the 1960s and 1970s, tobacco companies have largely marketed menthols to younger people and blacks, who now smoke the cigarettes at higher rates than other groups. Roughly 70 percent of blacks smoke menthols, compared with just over 20 percent of whites and 26 percent of Hispanics, according to the latest government data.

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