Attorney General's News Release

September 6, 2000

Big Tobacco hooked African Americans on the most addictive brands of cigarettes, Nixon says

St. Louis, Mo. — Big Tobacco's predatory marketing of highly addictive menthol cigarettes to African Americans resulted in higher addiction and death rates for blacks than for whites, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon told an African-American anti-smoking group in St. Louis today.

Speaking to the group Missouri Initiative to Stop Smoking In Our Neighborhoods (MISSION), Nixon publicly outlined for the first time Missouri's evidence of tobacco's targeting to African Americans and the disparate and devastating impact it had on the black community.

Nixon said nicotine and other dangerous elements of mentholated cigarettes, including a form of rat poison added to cigarettes, are more poisonous because smokers inhale light-tasting menthol cigarettes more deeply. Despite that information, Big Tobacco chose to market menthol to the African-American community, hooking more than 70-80 percent of African-Americans smokers on menthol brands.

The marketing evidence and other facts would have been presented for the first time to a court of law, had Nixon's case gone to trial.

"We were prepared to tell the truth about Big Tobacco and the African-American community, and it was not pretty," Nixon told MISSION members. Nixon said even though the case settled before trial, it is important that the facts amassed by the Missouri attorneys be presented to the public.

Nixon outlined several significant pieces of evidence:

• African Americans are 30 percent more likely to die from smoking-related diseases than whites and African American men stand the greatest risk of dying from lung cancer, with a death rate 50 percent higher than white men.
• Menthol brands — including Newport, Kool and Salem, which were marketed specifically to African Americans — are more addictive than any other brand;
• The technique of "ammonia-doping" used to boost the level of nicotine addiction in each cigarette makes an extremely deadly combination when used in menthol cigarettes;
• Big Tobacco laced their products with Coumarin, a type of rat poison, because they thought it would make menthol and other brands taste better.

Nixon said these facts helped explain why African Americans absorb 30 percent more nicotine from a single cigarette than white smokers do and have higher failure rates when they attempt to stop smoking.

Regarding marketing evidence, Nixon said studies conducted by St. Louis University professors demonstrate that every single cigarette billboard in St. Louis City was located within 2,000 feet of a school or day care.

Other marketing facts show:

• 400 percent more billboards were placed in the African-American communities than in the suburbs.
• Camel designed a "hip-hop" Joe Camel campaign in introducing its new menthol cigarettes. The campaign targeted young black males, and during the time of the campaign the rate of young black smokers in the 10th grade rose 92 percent and among 8th graders it more than doubled.

Inquiries from consumers should be directed to consumer@ago.mo.gov or 1-800-392-8222 (from within Missouri) or 573-751-3321 (outside Missouri).

All media inquiries should be directed to Press Secretary John Fougere.

E-mail      Phone: 573-751-8844         Fax: 573-751-5818