Give Big Tobacco, as they used to call it, some credit.
The most demonized industry in the country decided to protect itself from a ban by wrapping itself in DEI.
As I documented in “Black Cigarettes Matter”, tobacco companies brought in Al Sharpton, George Floyd’s ghost, and BLM.
Sharpton’s National Action Network claimed that banning menthol cigarettes would hurt black people and issued a press release stating that it had reached this position after “working with Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner” and serial BLM litigator Ben Crump.
During a previous attempt by New York to ban menthols, Sharpton had been thrown into the fight alongside Garner’s mother and George Floyd’s brother.
Last year, ‘Mothers of the Movement’ a group that included Carr, along with “Philonise Floyd” (a brother, not a mother), and Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, claimed that they had taken part in a panel at Sharpton’s NAA led by Crump and that banning menthol cigarettes was racist.
The old demonized companies remodeled and repainted their newly woke operations in rainbow colors and black power fists.
Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, announced a $5 million donation to fight “systemic racism” during the BLM race riots and claims that “inclusion, Diversity and Equity (ID&E) is embedded into everything we do.” The Marlboro cigarette manufacter has racial quotas for its executives for not only blacks, gays and Hispanics, but also to have 2% representation for “two spirit” men and women: a form of transgender identity supposedly grounded in Indian lore.
RJ Reynolds claims that “DE&I is an important part of our ESG strategy” and boasts of being listed by the Human Rights Campaign as one of the best places for gay people to work.
Did the strategy pay off? Ask Biden who just backed off a menthol ban for civil rights reasons.
The Biden administration has once again pushed back its plans to ban menthol cigarettes amid pressure from critics, including some civil rights leaders, who said it would unfairly target Black smokers.
“This rule has garnered historic attention and the public comment period has yielded an immense amount of feedback, including from various elements of the civil rights and criminal justice movement,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a Friday statement.
“It’s clear that there are still more conversations to have, and that will take significantly more time,” he added.
The issue is that if a company wants to buy off politicians, it can try bribing them directly or it can pay Sharpton to announce that a policy is racist.
I don’t support a ban, but I really don’t support companies being regulated based on how much money they invest in leftist identity politics movements.
Are menthol cigarettes any more or less dangerous once Sharpton endorsed them? Who knows. Not the ‘Party of Science’ which makes all of its decisions based on what BLM or Hamas in Dearborn, MI says.
Actual values, facts and priorities have no impact. Only leftist agitation does.
“If the Biden administration believed that Black lives matter, they would have ended the sale of menthol flavored cigarettes. Instead, they appear to be caving to Big Tobacco which has racistly targeted our community for decades,” Carol McGruder, co-chair of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, said. “Hundreds of thousands of Black Americans will die in the years to come because of today’s inaction. Shame on you, President Biden!”
It’s not about Biden, it’s about a party that is willing to commit any crime with the right identity politics rationale.
Tobacco companies found black leaders like Sharpton who will cry “racism” for cash. And that’s all that matters.
The moral of the story is it doesn’t matter whether your product kills people, including black people, what matters is how woke your company is.
