CHECKOUT TIME FOR MENTHOLS? A popular Tar Heel-made product eyes a controversial demise.

• Author: Knaack, Audrey
• Position: NCTREND: Manufacturing

The latest blow to strike North Carolina's tobacco industry may be a forthcoming Food and Drug Administration ban on the use of the menthol additive for cigarettes. The change, which was pending at press time, promises to make a big mark because menthol cigarettes make up about 37% of U.S. sales. Moreover, the best-selling menthol brand, Newport, is a primary brand of Winston-Salem-based Reynolds American, which is owned by British American Tobacco.

Reynolds American sells about 30 billion Newport cigarettes annually, according to the Los Angeles Times. At a 7-Eleven store in Matthews, a pack of Newports listed for $9.15 cents in early September.

Found naturally in peppermint, spearmint and other mint plants, menthol is a chemical compound that presides a sweet aroma and taste. The cigarettes were first marketed in the 1920s as a "health cigarette" for smokers experiencing throat irritation, says Keith Wailoo, a Princeton University professor who published a book last year, "Pushing Cool," on the history of the product.

Menthols steadily gained popularity over the years, particularly after the industry shifted to marketing the cigarettes to Black communities in the 1960s through billboard advertising and event promotions. Cigarette manufacturer Brown and Williamson "began aggressively advertising Kool cigarettes in Black communities, and because of the popularity', growth and success of their strategy, other companies joined in," Wailoo says in an interview on Princeton's website. Kool was then the dominant menthol brand. "What you begin to see in the '60s and the 1970s is a kind of intensive competition to garner and to control their Black franchise."

In the 1980s, New York-based Lorillard Tobacco started advertising its Newport brand--made at the company's Greensboro factory--mainly in Black neighborhoods in bigger U.S. cities. It quickly overtook Kool in popularity and by 2005, about half of cigarette sales to Black smokers in the U.S. were Newports, according to industry statistics. The brand later rose to No. 2 among all cigarettes, trailing Altria's Marlboro. R.J. Reynolds paid $27 billion to buy Lorillard in 2015, before the historic N.C. company was acquired by British-American.

When the FDA was granted regulatory oversight of tobacco products in 2009, the agency...