Epidemiology Gives Me a Tingle!

I don’t think I need to tell anyone that smoking cigarettes is bad for you. If you don’t realize this in an age where that message is shoved down everyone’s throats pretty consistently and the studies showing the negative impacts of smoking are produced by the boatload, I worry about you. Anyway, I want to talk about a specific type of cigarette: menthols. If you don’t know what a menthol cigarette is, here is a link to the menthol cigarette Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menthol_cigarette#cite_note-union-1

Why do I care about menthol cigarettes in particular? Well, I got interested in the issue after reading this article. It discusses a federal panel finding that banning menthol cigarettes would benefit public health in the U.S. The main issues that distinguish menthols from regular cigarettes are the IDEAS that the lessened harshness of menthols makes it more attractive to youths and African-Americans, has led to increased use by these groups, and it is harder to quit smoking with menthols. However, the article discusses many confounding factors that could lead to these results (socioeconomic factors, genetic factors, etc.) instead of the menthol itself and raises the concern that there is a lack of evidence at this time linking menthol cigarettes to worse outcomes than regular cigarettes. 

Courtesy of http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20388015_8,00.html

 Should menthol cigarettes be banned? Would a ban be because of the outcomes related to their use or the perceived effects they have on certain groups? Is there any evidence that menthols are worse for people physically than regular cigarettes? Should they just ban all cigarettes? Lots of questions with this issue. These questions should be addressed and more studies should be done before any decision is made in my opinion. But that’s why we have epidemiologists!