Recent studies have estimated the harm of menthol cigarettes in the U.S. from 1980-2018 among both the general population as well as among African Americans specifically, and have estimated the public health impact of a US ban on menthol in cigarettes and cigars in the general population. The FDA’s proposed rule cited these impactful studies and discussed the likely benefit of such a rule on the non-Hispanic Black population, but noted that there was not a study on that specific issue. Researchers from Georgetown University and the University of Michigan expanded on their prior research to estimate the impacts of a menthol ban on smoking and mortality outcomes for the non-Hispanic Black population and their implications for reducing racial disparities in mortality rates.  They estimated that a menthol ban implemented in the U.S. in 2021 would have averted 255,895 premature deaths among non-Hispanic Black people and gained 4 million life years in the non-Hispanic Black population by the year 2060, resulting in reductions in health disparities. They also note that their estimates do not measure the health impacts of people switching from menthol cigarettes to cigars, explaining that a menthol ban will be most effective if the FDA’s proposed flavored cigar rule is implemented at the same time. Read the paper.