Hi, I'm Dan Premack, and welcome to Axios Recap, where we dig into one big story.

Today is Thursday, May 6th.

Another game stop hearing happened up on Capitol Hill.

U.S. jobless claims are down, and we're focused on the controversial future of menthol cigarettes.

The Biden administration last week made a big public health announcement that had nothing to do

with the pandemic.

It was a proposal to ban menthol cigarettes, those peppermint-flavored smoksticks that are

currently used by more than 18 million Americans.

It also wants to ban all flavored cigarillos.

Now, the idea of banning menthols was first floated in 2017 by Scott Gottlieb, who was President Trump's first FDA chief

and the person responsible for banning all of those fruit-flavored vaping pods from companies

like Jewel. His reasoning was basically the same. Menthals are particularly popular among kids because their

sweetness can mask the harsh tobacco flavor. In fact, the FDA reports that almost half of all

smokers between 12 and 17 smoke menthols. But Trump sat on the recommendation, and it languished

until the new White House's announcement. Now, you might think reaction to Biden's move broke along

traditional political lines, or at least libertarian versus liberal lines with some geographic

variants thrown in. But it turns out that the politics of banning menthol's is much more

complicated, namely because around 85% of black smokers prefer menthols versus just 30% of white smokers. That's mostly because of

racially targeted marketing by menthol's makers, and it's led to concerns about racial equity,

including fears that this ban could result in many more black Americans in jail or worse.

As some have noted, Eric Gardner was first approached by police for selling single cigarettes without tax stamps, otherwise known as Lucy's.

He was then killed in that confrontation.

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