When asked if there was a different way to address smoking among Black people and the advertising that targets the Black community for products like menthol cigarettes, Crumps said that “it goes back to education.” Focusing on smoking as a public health issue, as what’s been done with white smokers and white-focused public health crises like the opioid epidemic would also be helpful. “The same way that white people smoke cigarettes, you need to try to be health advocates for Black people in the same manner,” Crump said. Contrasting the response to opioids to the proposed menthol ban, Crump warns against a double standard, with “our issues being criminal justice issues and their issues being public health issues.”
Crump urged the Biden administration to pause its plans and “engage in a commission to study this matter” and examine the potential unintended consequences of the proposed ban. Otherwise, he warned, “you end up with something else being associated with President Biden‘s name like the 1994 crime bill is associated with his name.” Beyond damaging Biden’s legacy, Crump also noted that the legislation could hurt Democrats in the next election. “You don’t want another issue to make Black people not want to come out to the polls and support the Democratic candidates because somebody said now they’ve made it against the law to smoke the cigarettes that the cigarette industry has made me addicted to, and now they’re going to call me a criminal for having this health issue.”
While defending smoking may not seem similar to representing victims of police brutality, Crump argued that his current stance is an extension of his larger work. “As a civil rights attorney, first and foremost, you want to make sure you have laws being passed that won’t disproportionately impact Black people in America,” Crump said. “And I’m concerned that if we aren’t careful, we might repeat the mistakes we made in the past.” He reiterated that “good-intentioned laws” like the 1990s anti-crime legislation, “have unintended consequences” and added that “I don’t want to make that same mistake.”