The Associated Press
Updated: 2:54 p.m. ET May 13, 2005


ALBANY, N.Y. - Flavored cigarettes have names that sound like exotic drinks — Winter Warm Toffee, Twista Chill and Kauai Kolada — and are advertised on the pages of glossy magazines — Rolling Stone, Glamour and Elle.

Teens are lighting them up — and, consequently, lawmakers are trying to ban them.

Congress is considering a bill to prohibit the sale of flavored cigarettes, as are New York, Minnesota, West Virginia, Connecticut, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas.

At least one tobacco company, Reynolds American Inc., has already stopped advertising them. Another, Altria, doesn’t make candy- or fruit-flavored cigarettes and supports a ban.


“These are designed to attract younger smokers,” said Michael Bopp of the American Cancer Society. “We don’t want to see a product introduced that will give back the gains we’ve made in this state in reducing teenage smoking.”

'Sweeten the poison'
A survey released last week by Buffalo’s Roswell Park Cancer Institute found that 20 percent of smokers 17 to 19 smoked flavored cigarettes in the past month, compared with just 6 percent of smokers over 25.

“They are using flavors to sweeten the poison,” said Dr. Gary Giovino, a senior researcher at the institute.

Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Reynolds American does not target minors in its marketing but decided to stop advertising flavored versions of its Camel brands — Mandarin Mint and Dark Mint — after meeting with Sen. Charles Fuschillo, a sponsor of New York’s bill, said company spokesman Fred McConnell. The brands will still be sold, however.

“We recognize use of certain names on Camel Exotics have resulted in unintended concerns,” he said.

McConnell said the company opposes legislation to ban flavored cigarettes because it would also ban conventional cigarettes.

“Ingredients like cocoa, sugar, licorice and menthol have been used in cigarettes for 100 years,” he said.
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I don't remember reading anything that has disgusted me more than this article. Despite the cigarette industry's vows to discourage the young from taking up the deadly habit, they produce something like this.

I pity anyone who has to raise a child in today's world. You have to overcome the negative affects of society at large, peer pressure, the smut and junk that's in the media and industries like this that invite cancer via a delicious flavor of the week. What a disgrace!

I honestly thought that by now there was a ban on such items!
This debate haas gone on forever, it seems like...from the turn of the 20th century when Dorothy Parker complained about her male poet friends using sandalwood on their smokes... on through the 1970's when they warned us not to buy those strawberry flavored turkish cigs available in every head shop.

If it really is still legal, they must do something. Some teens, especially are quite allergic to foreign substances in the lungs and have been known to keel over from just one cigarette. I haven't smoked in years and so haven't really kept up with it much.

You know, I knew plenty of teens who smoked cigarettes. Most of them smoked Marlboro Reds. Nothing flavored, nothing sweet. It was straight up cigarettes, because none of the specialty shops were stupid enough to sell to minors. The only place a minor could get their cigs was the corner gas station, and those fancy things weren't available there. When I started smoking, well after my 20th birthday, I smoked an English (I think) import brand called Nat Sherman, and I smoked the mint variety. And there isn't a darn thing wrong with that.

And as an adult, I object to having someone else tell me I am not allowed to smoke whatever flavor of cigarette I want, whether or not I SHOULD be smoking them at all. If they want to ban the advertising of such things, like they banned Joe Camel, etc., fine. If they want to ban the sale of non-tobacco "cigarettes" to minors, fine. But to ban the sale of flavored tobacco cigarettes entirely just to avoid teens smoking them... well, shouldn't they just try better to actually uphold the LAWS, the ones that ban teens from BUYING cigarettes of any kind?

I don't smoke a lot. 3 cigs a day at most. And usually I smoke plain ol' camel lights. But on occasion, I really enjoy a particular type of vanilla-flavored tobacco cig, and I'd be pretty upset if I was no longer allowed to buy them just because the legislature thinks that banning them is easier than enforcing existing laws. Teens shouldn't smoke. It's that easy. It's against the law for teens to smoke. Why is it neccessary to go on outlawing things? Maybe Nebraska law is different. If you smoke it, you can't buy it until you're 18, regardless of whether it contains tobacco or not. Is that different elsewhere?

And I'm raising a child in today's society. Maybe I'm sheltered. Maybe it has something to do with living in Nebraska. But I'm not seeing a lot of difference between raising my daughter now, and how my parents' raised me. I'm really not worried. And since I never saw flavored cigs being this big draw for any of my friends or teenage peers, and the only people I've ever known who smoked them were adults, maybe I just don't see how they're such a terrible thing. Will they next go after flavored pipe tobacco or cigars? And is that the same sort of all-encompassing evil as flavored cigs? And if not, why?

That's a good point! My only problem with flavored stuff is the fact that teenage high school and college kids do try not only these but other novelty tobaccos [ plus cigars] according to my friend who owns a campus vicinity smoke shop. I don't care who buys what after they are grown. But if a kid inhales stuff that comes from some factory in the middle east where they also use the bacteria laden stuff swept up off the floor at the end of the day, there could be [ and have been real problems]

As for someone telling me or anybody I can't smoke in my car or on my own property? I don't think so. Already in this college town we live in, nobody can smoke anywhere in public. We need heads up, folks. Our liberties are dissapearing one by one. What will be next?

I'm sure if I saw the country-wide stats for flavored smoke products, I'd see you are right, kstew, that teens do try these things. And I understand the point about other things being in them that aren't neccessarily meant to be ingredients.

But these things should not be legal for teens to get, whether they contain tobacco or not. And if it is illegal for teens to get them, why do they need to be outright banned? That's all I think about the subject.