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According to a To***co Control letter, adopting the FDA’s menthol ban would offer substantial environmental benefits because it would reduce 3.8 billion cigarette litter annually.

This has already worked in Canada. The country started banning menthol ci******es from 2015 to 2018, leading many smokers to quit. The authors used the quit rate from Canada’s menthol cigarette ban to estimate that a similar ban in the US can cause 1.3 million smokers to quit. They then multiplied it by 11.9, the average daily number of ci******es smoked among US adult menthol smokers, and by 365 to get the yearly reduction of ci******es smoked—5.8 billion.

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“We multiplied 5.8 billion total fewer ci******es smoked per year after the ban by the published estimate that 65 percent of ci******es are littered in the US,” says Lorraine V. Craig, dissemination manager of the International To***co Control (ITC) Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Waterloo in Canada who was involved in the study. “This resulted in our estimate that the proposed US menthol cigarette ban would lead to 3.8 billion fewer ci******es being littered per year.”

Every year, about 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are discarded globally, making them the most littered item on Earth. Around 90 percent of ci******es have filters made of a biobased plastic called cellulose acetate, which can take up to 14 years to decompose. Nevertheless, cigarette butts are still considered hazardous solid waste, even if they are thrown away properly.

In recent years, non-menthol ci******es have become less prevalent, but menthol cigarette use did not decrease nor change significantly. As a result, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently proposed a ban on menthol in ci******es and other characterizing flavors other than to***co in ci**rs to reduce cigarette use, pushing menthol cigarette users to stop smoking.

A menthol ban such as this may minimize health disparities since vulnerable populations have a higher tendency to use menthol ci******es. Almost 40 percent of smokers across the country prefer menthol over non-menthol ci******es. Still, this preference is disproportionately high among Black people, socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, le***an, gay, and bisexual individuals, and those with mental health problems. Menthol cigarette use also persists among racial/ethnic minority youth.

Although the FDA intended to reduce disease and death from cigarette use, research shows that a menthol ban can also benefit the environment.

In October, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, signed a bill that bars federal funds earmarked for the University of Oklahoma Medical Center from being used for gender affirming treatments for minors, while calling for the state legislature to ban some gender affirming treatments when it reconvenes in February 2023. Additionally, Tennessee has passed legislation curbing trans healthcare, but it faces legal challenges. Arizona has passed four laws regarding transgender healthcare.

While these pieces of legislation continue to be tangled up in courts, groups like the Human Rights Campaign and AAP say they will continue to fight for medical care for trans youth.

“It is critically important for every child to have access to quality, comprehensive and evidence-based care — transgender and gender-diverse youth are no exception,” said AAP Immediate Past President Lee Savio Beers in a statement earlier this year regarding an increase in laws targeting trans youth. “As pediatricians, we will continue to speak up and advocate for our patients. We also want transgender and gender-diverse youth to know that not only do we care for them, we care about them, we value them and we will do all we can to ensure they have access to the care they need and deserve.”