Black People Like Menthols?

To be honest, until recently, I had no idea that they did. I smoke menthols. I'm white. Logically speaking, nothing follows these two facts, except perhaps that black people do as well.

This brings me to a separate tangent. People who post questions and even more absurdly, people who answer these questions on online forums- today's example being 'Yahoo Answers" with the appropriate question of "Why do black people like menthol cigarettes"

Before you waste your time actually clicking on the link, be warned there are no good answers. Someone took the time to note that he "had no idea" while another gem came back with the piercing rhetorical question of "why do Asian people like cats?". Hopefully she will start a new thread to get that one ironed out.

I decided to try and find someone with an expensive degree to answer the question, like Sarah S. Lochlann Jain, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Stanford University, who sounds really white and probably doesn't smoke:

"The sensation you get from a menthol cigarette—a rush of cold, a feeling like your lungs are clearing—might have appealed particularly to black people because of its similarity to eucalyptus- or menthol-laced over-the-counter cold medications. Such meds were popular with blacks who, perhaps not surprisingly, had limited access to health care. For a time, in fact, people thought menthols did have medicinal benefits and that they were healthier than regular cigarettes."

"Why do Asian's like cats" is almost a better answer.