• The New York Times, Tuesday, May 13, 2008 10:30 AM

Legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to oversee tobacco products will try to reduce smoking's allure to young people by banning most flavored cigarettes--including clove and cinnamon--but not menthol.

Menthol is the most widely used cigarette flavoring and the most popular cigarette choice of African-American smokers, but it is seen as politically off limits because mentholated brands are so crucial to the American cigarette industry. They make up more than one-fourth of the $70 billion American cigarette market and are becoming increasingly important to the industry leader, Philip Morris USA, without whose lobbying support the legislation might have no chance of passage.

For years, public health authorities have worried that menthol might be a factor in high cancer rates in African-Americans. But even William S. Robinson, executive director of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, acknowledges that the ingredient needed to be off the bargaining table--for now--because he does not want to imperil the bill's chances.

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