Poison from the Root: Sociohistorical Perspectives on Tobacco and the Black Community

The federal government has delayed finalizing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) proposed rule to ban menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes, which can greatly reduce the burden of tobacco use, especially among marginalized groups (1). Some object that the menthol ban represents government-sanctioned racism, reasoning that the ban would paternalistically infringe on the freedom of Black Americans to purchase the tobacco products of their choosing and would exacerbate inequitable policing (2). Because tobacco companies have attempted to use the same arguments of racism via paternalism and disproportionate impact as cudgels against excise taxes and even advertising restrictions there is good reason to look askance (3). But what is most interesting about this position is that, in amplifying such concerns, the tobacco industry presumes a role of advocacy and allyship with the Black community. To weigh the credibility of this posture, we must consider the sociohistorical context of interactions between the tobacco industry and Black Americans. As Black pulmonologists, we are uniquely positioned for this task, and we therefore endeavor to interpret a potential menthol ban through this lens.

Tobacco farmers, cigarette manufacturers, and licensed sellers are all active participants in American society, both reacting to and helping to shape social forces. In this context, a focus only on economic or even health-related consequences is too narrow. To more comprehensively understand tobacco’s relationship with Black Americans, we must consider both market and nonmarket effects. The most important question is whether the impact of tobacco cultivation has been especially helpful to Black Americans, relative to other segments of society. Are tobacco companies a credible ally? In answering, we will consider the behavior of tobacco companies within the agricultural sector, the influence of tobacco on the national political discourse, and direct health effects on Black well-being and livelihood.

The economic success of the American tobacco industry has relied on Black communities and Black lives since the industry’s inception (4). But did benefits flow in the other direction? Because of the limited economic opportunities for Black Americans through much of American history, a somewhat detailed consideration of agriculture is necessary to resolve this question. Enslaved labor was the cornerstone of the tobacco industry in the 18th century, with coerced management of tobacco crops being directly responsible for the financial success of tobacco growers until slavery became illegal (5). Sharecropping followed afterward, an important part of tobacco production. Considering only economic arguments, sharecropping served as an engine of economic mobility for some formerly enslaved people (6). This was true across many crops, not exclusive to tobacco. The broader context reveals that sharecropping’s legal and economic structure strongly favored White planters, even by standards of the day (7). The practical effect was to trap the majority of Southern Blacks in a capital–labor arrangement underpinned by cyclic debt, pervasive violence, and political dependency (7, 8). Subsequently, one major cause of Black attrition from agriculture was the drive toward mechanization (9), which the tobacco industry strongly supported (10). This might have been ameliorated by curbing the individual and institutional racism at the Department of Agriculture (DOA) that excluded Black farmers from critical state-assisted modernization resources available to White farmers (11). However, despite considerable policymaking influence, the tobacco industry declined to intervene on behalf of purported Black allies to support their inclusion in these DOA programs. Demonstratively, in South Carolina, the DOA “rel[ied] heavily” on position papers from tobacco lobbyists (12). More directly echoing the present debate, the industry won exemption from oversight as a precondition of the FDA’s establishment, despite their core product being denounced by the Tennessee Supreme Court as early as 1898 as “not legitimate articles of commerce” that were instead “wholly noxious and deleterious to health” (13). Despite this lack of support, Black farmers remained more likely to farm tobacco than other crops through the 1970s because of the federal system of price controls and growth allotments for tobacco (9), both of which the industry strongly opposed (10).

This suggests a more complex relationship with Black farmers than initially evident. At present, tobacco manufacturers continue to promote cultivation across Sub-Saharan Africa, despite the fact that other crops are known to yield higher returns and better standards of living for local farmers (14). Farmers of all races are now decreasingly likely to report feeling represented by the policy agendas of tobacco companies (15). In fact, close readings of internal documents from the tobacco industry suggest significant tensions between them and supposedly allied farmers in prior generations (12). Although it is therefore undeniable that tobacco cultivation has at times been beneficial to some individual Black farmers, when viewed in context this outcome seems incidental. Despite the present claims of allyship, the tobacco industry has been destructive to Black people in agriculture, staying silent when speaking up would have helped and vocal when silence would have been more favorable.

Considering Black people as consumers, it is not reasonable to insist that choice is the primary issue when nearly 7 out of 10 smokers desire to quit annually, yet, because of nicotine’s addictive properties, fewer than 10% succeed (16). Moreover, menthol advertising and marketing strategies have been specifically targeted toward Black smokers since inception (17). Even after controlling for socioeconomic differences, Black communities have more menthol cigarette advertisements than neighborhoods where other racial/ethnic groups predominate (18). This practice is notable, as other mainstream consumer products only advertised directly to Black consumers much later (17).

Tobacco companies have used two contradictory political strategies: simultaneously supporting Black politicians and their adversaries. Such double-mindedness is still evident in their arguments against a menthol ban, which simultaneously mimic antiracist language and propagandistically claim the ban would promote an immigrant crime wave by encouraging Mexican drug cartels and terrorist organizations to become black-market providers (19). Although in reality there is no good evidence for this claim, it is an especially effective appeal to White nationalists (20). Regardless, tobacco companies have historically contributed to the campaigns of Black politicians and civil rights organizations; this is especially evident when comparing donations to Democratic Party candidates of different racial/ethnic groups (3, 21). Internal documents from these companies are unambiguous about their intentions. As detailed in a memo about a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People fundraiser “the sole reason for interest […] in the Black and Hispanic community is the actual and potential sales” (3). In another, they suggested supporting Black community activities as a means of diffusing the threat of protest (22). Their public record also suggests strong ulterior motives. In the mid-1980s, a Philip Morris executive wrote an editorial in the New York Times ostensibly celebrating the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act (23). Coming more than a decade and a half after passage, such sentiments were less impactful than they might have been if expressed at the time of the legislative debate. Worse, the piece then shifts to a strained analogy between Jim Crow laws and proposals to limit smoking in public spaces. As rhetoric, this argument echoes “public health” justifications for segregation in the first place, where some officials suggested increased contact with Black people would spread disease (24). Substantively, this analogy is worse, because by this time the harmful effects of smoking were known to tobacco executives, just as the aforementioned stereotypes about Black people as special vectors of disease were known to be false. So, at least regarding purpose, these prior instances of claimed allyship have a consistent thread of extracting benefit from Black people rather than expressing support for them.

Nonetheless, it is still theoretically possible that, regardless of their motivation, tobacco lobbyists’ support for Black politicians may have benefitted the Black community. However, the industry’s second political strategy becomes crucial to our analysis. Namely, the tobacco industry has historically relied on the support of openly hostile and racist politicians to establish and maintain its powerful foothold in American policymaking. These methods have always been antithetical to the fundamental rights of Black people. Jesse Helms, a publicly avowed racist, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Voting Rights Act on multiple occasions and led a multiday boycott to prevent the recognition of Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday as a federal holiday (25). This political legacy never stopped the tobacco industry from being one of his most prolific, long-standing sources of political donations (26). Similarly, the Tobacco Institute—at the time, the most important tobacco lobbying group in the country—tightly embraced Lee Atwater, the architect of the Southern Strategy, an approach that stoked and then capitalized on anti-Black racial resentment as a political tool during elections (27). Atwater’s disdain for the Black community was evident: in public interviews, he gleefully detailed how he helped develop code words that could be used in place of racial slurs to appeal to bigoted voters (28). In both this case and menthol-flavored cigarettes, racialization was used to maximize advertising impact regardless of material consequences. Contemporarily, Representative Paul Gosar, a man notorious for racist rhetoric, including speeches at White nationalist conferences, has also enjoyed support from tobacco lobbies (29, 30).

Drawing conclusions about the overall impact of tobacco companies’ political activity requires synthesizing the consequences from these two approaches. It would be possible, but erroneous, to compare only the dollar value of contributions to each cause, when even a consideration of the few examples shared here reveals the effect was disproportionate promotion of anti-Black racism. The lowest-ranking Senator has more expansive powers than the average House member (31), so even without considering his committee chairmanships, Jesse Helms was better positioned to translate his racial beliefs to policy than most Black elected officials. Lee Atwater was a senior advisor to multiple Presidents and a campaign manager to President George H. W. Bush, affording him regular access to some of the most powerful figures in the world (32). Celebrating Atwater, the ostensible architect of racism’s incorporation into modern political campaigns, normalized that behavior (27), even as it promoted a toxic, anti-Black tone for public discourse we still struggle against. By supporting relatively more powerful racists than Black politicians, the tobacco lobby ensured that, regardless of intent, the overall impact of their political involvement would promote harm rather than good to the Black community.

The tobacco industry and especially menthol cigarettes have been destructive forces in Black lives. As an early American cash crop, tobacco was a crucial stimulant to and beneficiary of the slave trade, encouraging French and elite American participation in the Revolutionary War (4, 33). Given its role in contributing to this particular historical trajectory, the tobacco industry shares some accountability for the subsequent cascade of death, torture, and exploitation directed at the African American community in the United States. Similarly, the Night Riders emerged as tobacco cultivators turned to terroristic violence against other parts of the industry’s supply chain to counter the monopolistic power of the American Tobacco Company. But once established, the economic campaign quickly morphed into disconnected racial violence (34). The meaning of the Night Riders in the popular consciousness is clear from the choice of later groups to take up the moniker when embarking on anti-Black ethnic purges (35). Although in many respects, reviewed heretofore, the tobacco industry could be viewed as similar to other interests of its time, relatively few corporate interests in American society can be described as so provoking the creation of terrorist organizations. The historical toll continues to be felt presently. In 2013, one-third of excess deaths that account for the racial mortality gap in men were directly attributable to tobacco products (36).

Conclusions

The legacy of tobacco on the Black community and this nation as a whole is painful. As we have reviewed, the tobacco industry has at many points claimed to speak on behalf of broader groups: not only Black Americans, but all farmers, for instance. Generally, these claims disingenuously ignore the holistic effects of this activity. No one should misconstrue their true intent, least of all those of us whose families were disenfranchised by the inequitable agricultural policies the tobacco industry supported, targeted by their promotion of racist voices in the national political discourse, and harmed by their negative influence on Black well-being. Their central defense against a proposed menthol ban is fallacious: we identified no trend wherein the tobacco industry could be characterized as authentically supportive of the Black community. The proposed menthol ban should be enacted immediately. The federal government has failed to do so once but can correct their mistake (37). Just as menthol masks the bitterness and bodily harm of cigarettes, tobacco companies mask harms to the Black community with false friendship. It is time to end this sick charade.