To the Editor:
Despite the state’s growing budget shortfalls, a law to restrict the sale of flavored tobacco products, including mint and menthol cigarettes, is set to take effect next week. Gov. Charlie Baker has said he sees no reason the ongoing coronavirus pandemic should delay that.
I’m writing this to make a final attempt to do what legislators are struggling to do: retain the state tax revenue received from tobacco sales, while also protecting the safety of communities of color, particularly black men who smoke.
By delaying – not repealing – the implementation of the menthol ban by one year, communities of color will have the opportunity to work with community leaders and fellow legislators to craft a meaningful plan to address very real community issues that will be made worse by the inability to buy historically legal tobacco products.
For communities of color, a blanket flavor tobacco and menthol cigarette ban is fertile ground to add to the rates of stop-and-search incidents already disproportionately impacting minorities. This is because research shows that of the black adults who choose to smoke, more than 80 percent prefer menthol cigarettes; this includes black adult smokers in Massachusetts.
Together we can make sure that we do not leave behind hundreds of millions of tax dollars that consumers pay to exercise an adult choice, that can help offset what I now understand to be close to a $6 billion deficit so that critical services to the poor and minority communities, many of whom are my church members, can be preserved. It would be absurd for the Legislature to cast aside such money and then have to cut local services to the poor more deeply in its absence, especially in the midst of recovering from COVID-19 devastation.
As our state, like all states, seeks to recover from the human, fiscal, and business devastation brought on by the coronavirus, we must ask ourselves to consider the ripple effects and added devastation of banning flavored tobacco at this time.
Before the ban goes into effect, I want to ensure that legislators and the public know and understand the dangers that we could now be welcoming: an increase in illicit tobacco trade. Giving police officers a reason to detain and engage smokers in minority communities, many of whom are black men, to find out where they purchased their menthol cigarettes could lead to encounters that are likely to escalate to the unnecessary use of force and arrests.
I urge members of the Legislature to consider the broad impact of a blanket ban on flavored tobacco and menthol cigarette products. I urge decision-makers and regulators to delay this legislation.
The letter writer, Rev. Filipe Cupertino Teixeira, OFSJC (Franciscan Order of St. Joseph Cupertino), has long practiced ministry in Dorchester and Roxbury.
