Air Health Our Health Not Kool- Menthol and Lung Numbing w/ Prof. Sven Jordt
So many people begin their cigarette or e-cigarette addiction by using mint flavors such as menthol. Why is this? What does it do? To answer that question on the pod today, I talk to Dr. Sven Jordt PhD, who is a scientist at Duke who studies menthol and shares his own journey with cigarette addiction and empathizes with the difficulty of quitting. He also is a member of the Tobacco Action Committee of the American Thoracic Society.
Menthol numbs the lungs to let you inhale more toxins and not realize how irritating the chemicals you are inhaling are. This fuels new nicotine addictions. The tobacco industry is trying to get around flavor bans by making chemicals with this property but without the flavor smell. It also turns out that the chemicals that go into an e-cigarette are not the only chemicals that come out after all those chemicals have been sitting in the device at room temperature and mixing over time.
Flavors, especially menthol, are designed to mask the harshness and danger of inhaled nicotine.
So what can you do?
To hear more about Carrie’s story and about a county trying to protect its youth, listen to “A County vs Big Tobacco” from last season. Talk to your local or state policymakers to see if you can introduce a comprehensive flavor ban in your county or state. Don’t forget to include those new synthetic compounds that numb the lungs like mint but try to escape the “flavor” label!
For more on the history of menthol and its targeting of children in general and the black community in particular, listen to the episode “A Heartbreaking Trap” with youth pastor Ritney Castine.
For more on the odd shapes of e-cigs designed to be hidden in schools, you can look at the Tobacco Education Resource Library.
To learn how to talk to young people in your life about e-cigarettes, listen to the first episode from this season, #DotheVapeTalk. You can also go to talkaboutvaping.org for more resources.
If you already use a flavored or menthol inhaled tobacco device and think it’s finally time to quit, check out the “Quit, Don’t Switch” campaign from the American Lung Association for other resources to help quit smoking.
Finally, please consider a donation to the American Lung Association, who employs wonderful people like Carrie, fighting hard to rid our communities of the scourge of Big Tobacco.
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