Federal ban on flavored cigarettes, are they pushing it too much?

I don’t think it will do much to curb smokers habits. They just won’t be able to get the flavored ones.

I heard they’re also shutting down hookah bars. There’s one near where I live that is closing, and they were doing really well… That law might just be a Massachusetts thing, though.

Anyway, since I’m not a smoker I really couldn’t care less. Although I suppose that when I date a smoker I do prefer when they smoke cloves versus normal cigarettes… so they smell/taste better… :D

heard something about not allowing companies to use terms like “Light” “Mild” “Smooth” etc. because it makes people think they’re less hazardous.

cigarette companies get such a raw deal sometimes. Listen, I understand smoking is bad, and 20 years ago companies tried to hide the fact that smoking could potentially cause cancer. But these days it really doesn’t seem fair to them, especially since they’ve done away with a lot of the issues they had back then. Tax after Tax, regulation after regulation. You don’t see the government forcing McDonald’s to put “Warning: this will make your ass HUGE” on the side of that big mac box.

It’s the same concept, if anything McDonald’s needs it more. Today you’d be hard pressed to find a single person that doesn’t know the risks of smoking, you don’t need to tax them to death, you don’t need to handcuff a legitimate industry the way they’re trying to.

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 Oh, I think it’s more than fair. They are lucky they are still in business, considering what they hawk. Compared to what they do in third world countries we are lucky. Small kids puffing dugans is not a pretty sight.

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 I think some people would say that the high tax on cigarettes is designed to deter people from buying them, (not that it has even so much as slowed me down) and recoup some of the money spent on the medical issues they cause.

I agree that Mickey D’s should have warnings printed on the containers, and I think that’s a great idea, but I am more concerned about getting cancer than a huge ass. I wish the addiction to smoking was as easy for me to beat as deciding not to go to Mickey D’s. I would be a much healthier person now if it was.

My company has just done something to give us smokers a nudge towards quitting. they are raising our insurance rates. If we don’t sign a pledge to stop smoking and participate in the stop smoking programs they offer, our insurance will be $93.00 more each month. I’m hoping that will be incentive enough for me to quit once and for all. I’ve tried several times, and failed so far. :(

When they’re done with cigarettes they’ll start focusing on something else. Better hope it’s not something you (collective, point at the screen, you) enjoy.

Besides menthol, what flavors are there? I’ve only seen flavored cigars, not cigarettes.

I never knew there were flavored cigarettes. What are they flavored as?

There’s plenty of flavored cigarettes out there… strawberry, vanilla, etc :)

Camel had a few different flavors that came in nice tins.

Does the flavor really make any sort of difference? I thought that smokers smoke because of the nicotine and because it gives them something to do.

But then, I have never smoked.

I tried the cloves flavor, but it’s very harsh.

Flavors can make quite a bit of difference. Some brands/types more than others.

@O is Budweiser lucky they’re still in business? is Nike Lucky to be in business, are fast food joints like BK Wendy’s and McDonald’s lucky to be in business? Every single one of those companies have been accused directly, or affiliated with business that have been accused of unethical business practices in third world countries, as well as retail tycoons Wal-Mart and Target.

Tobacco is one of the only products that is taxed to such a ridiculous extent because it is associated with health risks. It’s completely unjustified and to be honest I don’t know how the Federal Government gets away with it.

Well its a good selling point, young smokers may start with flavored cigarettes, and they start trying something else. I was a former smoker, and I started smoking with menthol and got bored with it, so went with lights.

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 If I were to hazard an uninformed guess I would say that cigarettes are targeted because until recently anyone could buy them, at any age. Then they started making laws about how old you could be to buy them and enforced them (there was a student smoking section at my high school, so that says something). Then they just kept adding more taxes on to them because they could.

What you’re seeing is a slow form of prohibition-ism. The government knows what would happen if they just banned them outright; they’d done it before with alcohol. But you do it slow and start a propaganda campaign against it so you don’t get a new generation of smokers and, hopefully, there won’t be another huge criminal outbreak.

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 They get away with high taxes and legislation in Europe too. It is poisonous to your body. I suspect that weed is far more healthy to smoke.

They fucking banned clove cigarettes in NJ on sept 22nd. Its fucking bullshit Young smokers start with flavored cigarettes? GTFO. Young smokers smoke whatever the fuck they can get their hands on. The thing that really irks me about this is 90% of the population doesnt even know wtf cloves are. You know how often i used to be smoking one and someone would ask wtf it was i had. Oh yea… im sure the kids are all over them – _ -

They did? I didn’t know that. I still have 2 packs at home. I guess I could get top dollar for them now, huh?

@scamp i got something worked out with the indians at my tobacco store where theyre smuggling them to me :P

As far as harshness yea, some are pretty harsh, i love the djarum blacks though mmmmm cinnamon

@O so is alcohol, and they’re not taxed nearly as much, so is fast food, caffeine, ibuprofen and food dye, but those aren’t taxed to such a ridiculous extent. At least tobacco products tell you they’re bad for you.

i think its great. almost no older smokers use flavored cigs therefore they are aimed at younger people who should not start smoking. They sound safer then normal ones but are actually worse as they are more synthetic. I personally believe cigs should be banned and made prescription for smokers, as smoking has no benefits, waste millions of dollars a year and just smells bad.

@Alek2407 but who the fuck are you to say what i put in my body?

I think this is an overreaction. Flavored cigarettes are a small portion of tobacco sales, and they’re barely even marketed at anyone at all, never mind minors. (When was the last time you saw an ad for them? The market is just too small.) I think it was right to do away with tv ads for tobacco and mascots like Joe Camel; those probably did encourage kids to smoke. I didn’t start smoking until I was nineteen, and I’m still a pretty occasional smoker (maybe 3–5 cigarettes a week at most.) Cloves are my favorite kind of cigarette. They have an awesomely smoky and spicy flavor, there’s sugar on the tip and the end crackles as you smoke them… it’s really nice to have one every once in a while as the weather turns cold.

I know most people are not smokers, and probably think I’m stupid/ throwing my life away for smoking at all, even in moderation. It’s great that the deceptive advertising of the past has been mostly done away with, and people are so aware of the hazards of tobacco. Propaganda goes both ways, though. Before, too many people thought that smoking was harmless because that is what the tobacco companies told us. Now, we’re well aware of the risks of tobacco, but ignore other health problems. By smoking, I choose to occasionally do something unhealthy, because I like it. There’s not a person out there who doesn’t have some unhealthy habit they indulge in, whether it’s eating some unhealthy food, caffiene, alcohol, or whatever. About about ⅔ of our population is overweight, and the government isn’t doing anything to address that problem.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I feel a little bit penalized for the behavior of these underaged kids who are smoking. Flavored tobacco isn’t more harmful than other tobacco. It’s too bad that they had to ban an entire product, instead of doing the harder thing and making it harder for minors to buy these products in the first place.

oh btw anyone who really likes cloves like i do, they still will sell djarum black cigars they taste a bit different, but hey whadda ya gonna do?

I love news like this. The governemt wants to make it LOOK like they want to curb smoking. It keeps the masses happy, and yet they just keep on taking the cigarette tax money. We know smoking is bad. There’s no doubt about it. So why doesn’t our government simply ban it then? Hmmm?

It makes sense for the federal government to speak out on this though, because as a previous poster said, flavored cigarettes are a tiny portion of the market anyway. If sales of flavored cigarettes go down, then the sale of other types of cigarettes will go up. So it doesn’t really matter in the end.

What about flavored dip? They got cherry, wintergreen, grape, green apple, spearmint, etc in smokeless tobacco. Cloves will just show up on the black market 20 or 40 bucks a pack.

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 Yup, but of those things you lined up there, only tobacco get you hooked. The rest just relies on bad judgment.

I think it’s stupid. It’s not going to curb smoking. They’re wasting their time and money.

@O “only tobacco get you hooked.” ohhh yea, i mean i dont know anyone who NEEDS their morning coffee.

@uberbatman Mornings are for coffee as internet for porn.

@O and long car rides are for smoking cigarettes, whats your point?

@uberbatman You seriously compare coffee to cigarettes?

Yeah, the new ban really sucks. The idea is that the flavored cigarettes encourage kids to smoke. I have no idea if that’s true or not, and I’m not sure how studies could be done on this accurately. I’m really sad about the loss of my beloved Djarums, but even more about the loss of the Camel Mandarins, Chocolate Mints, and especially the Ismere Stingers. They are so delicious.

@Darwin Flavor makes a difference in terms of the pleasure you get from smoking the cigarette, not in getting the nicotine rush.

@scamp Try the Djarum Splash pack – they’re not as heavy as the Bali Hais or the Blacks.

@O why not? A vice is a vice. Neither are healthy and both are addictive. If your going to ban one thing because its bad, one should be prepared to ban all.

How is caffeine different from any other drug? Hmmmm feeling tired and unalert? drink some coffee, that will get you up and about! but watch out for that crash later on.

sounds a bit like coke no?

@uberbatman How many develop cancers and loss of capacity in bodily organs due to coffee? I have never heard of any studies showing that coffee is detrimental to you. Actually the opposite. It seems it’s quite healthy.

fuck yea wildpotato :P

@wildpotato Yes, sure some heavy drinkers develop anxiety due to caffeine shortage. There are health benefits from drinking coffee as well. Rich in antioxidants, reducing the risks of cancers, altzheimers, parkinsons and dementia are just some of the health benefits of normal coffee intake.

Yanno, I can help you google it, if ya want.

just as a side note, i have watched someone overdose on caffiene and had to have EMT’s hit him with the defibrillator to get him to come back.

@uberbatman Yes, I am sure bro. But that wasn’t really cups of coffee, was it?

It was not until I was seventeen years old that I first found out that such a thing as flavored cigarettes existed.

This is from the American Lung Association:
“Among high school students in 2007, the most prevalent forms of tobacco used in the last thirty days were cigarettes (20 percent), cigars (13.6 percent), and smokeless tobacco (includes chewing tobacco and snuff; 7.9 percent).8 Bidi use (skinny candy-flavored cigarettes) in the last year by 12th graders was 1.7 percent in 2007, while kretek use (clove cigarettes) in the last year by 12th graders was 6.8 percent.9 Although smokeless tobacco use previously was uncommon among adolescents, older teens began using it between 1970 and 1985, at the same time that the smokeless tobacco industry was strengthening their marketing efforts.”

Flavored cigarettes are clearly not the reason that most kids start smoking. From what I can see, the majority start because they are trying to create a certain image of themselves, which is generally based on the smoking of cigarettes specifically—not cigars, not kreteks, not pipes.

As much as I’d like it if no one smoked, especially children, I don’t believe a ban on flavored cigarettes is necessary. Everyone knows that smoking is harmful to one’s health. But people still smoke, and that is a choice that should be up to the individual. Banning something that a relatively small number of people enjoy, while leaving existing laws for regular cigarettes and cigars intact is ridiculous. I doubt it will have any effect at all besides irritating a very small group of people needlessly.

Anyway, Celestial Seasonings makes an herbal chi tea called “Bengal Spice,” which, combined with some rolling tobacco, (or, if you are not a tobacco smoker, as I am not, some other ‘filler,’ just to give the smoke some weight) can be rolled into a cigarette that tastes remarkably like a clove. (By the way, anyone looking to make their own kreteks should avoid thinking that cloves give are what produce the distinctive flavor. Cloves themselves taste terrible; it’s the bath of spices that the dry materials are given that produces that wonderful flavor.)

@petethepothead i think cloves taste amazing. I often just chew on whole cloves. mmmmm numby mouth :P

@uberbatman Look man, everything is bad for you if you do it over the top. Coffee too. There such a thing as water poisoning as well. I agree on that banning flavored cigarettes probably doesn’t do much more than piss people off. But come on. Cigs are slowly killing you. Take a lung x-ray, just for fun. It ain’t pretty.

I just ordered a carton of my favorites from Jakarta last week, I’ll let you know when the package arrives. Better pricing for sure, even with shipping.

@O if you agree that everything is bad for you, and everything can be overdone, why the fuck do you have a problem with others smoking. We know its bad for us. WE KNOW. Really we do. But we’re adults living in a supposedly free country. Why the hell cant we choose what to put in our bodies?

Personally, I don’t care if you smoke yourselves into a coma. Just don’t do it anywhere near me. Cigarette smoke makes me have asthma attacks and you have no right to do that to me.

Why the hell cant we choose what to put in our bodies?

Because you folks sometimes aren’t choosy enough about who else gets affected by it, and because we all get to help pay for your lung diseases that result from smoking.

Flavors = yummy = kids thinking positively about them. The end.

@petethepothead yep- I’m part of that very small group that is needlessly irritated. Jerks. I like the idea of that bengal spice tea, but I don’t know if I’d go as far as mixing and rolling my own blend of tobacco. It sounds like a huge pain.

@Haleth its really not that bad. Once you get good at it, you can easily knock out a pack in 5–10 min.

Apparently we’re not supposed to use the “Let Me Google That For You” link. Fair enough. Here’s the same link, but I actually did Google it for you this time :)

@O, And to respond to your point: I do still think that normal coffee intake, such as 1 shot of espresso per day as I allow myself, can be very harmful. For instance, I missed my shot today and now I’m falling asleep in class and have a bad headache. I have taken many different addictive substances over long periods of time before, and from personal experience I think that caffeine ties for the worst, in terms of both withdrawal symptoms and long-term effect on health. PM me if you want details on what I’m comparing it to.

@uberbatman I guess for the same reason we have to wear a seat belt while driving. It costs society a huge chunk of both money and citizens. Cigarette smoking is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths in the US according to the American Cancer Society.
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_10_2X_Cigarette_Smoking.asp
I have seen similar numbers in several places, over 400 000 deaths a year. That’s quite some 9/11’s. It seems to be even worse in Europe if you look at the numbers. But the EU has 500 million citizens.

Now, coffee probably saves more lives than it brings down. I am in favor of freedom of choice, even euthanasia for people who don’t want to suffer any more. But… I think that people prefer to live a full life time. Philip Morris takes years of life, every day in America.

Underage jelly smoker here – I can tell you with extreme confidence that the only reason some kids chose to smoke flavored cigarettes like that is because they want to try it or they are drunk. We are going to smoke regardless.

But this totally kills my plan for a Willy Wonka style cigarette – you know, a full course meal! French Onion soup to start, then red wine, a deep beefy portion, and finally a blueberry pie! And then your lungs swell up like two blueberries and the Oompa Loompas have to take you to get them drained…

Could be a cool anti-smoking ad….

I am very anti-smoking. I still don’t see how this will curb smoking habits. But as I don’t like smoking, to be honest I could care less if they get rid of them.

I’m pretty extreme on the smoking issue.
I think a product that deadly and addictive should not be available at all.

@O nope, never met anyone addicted to alcohol before…..

never met anyone with a compulsive eating disorder either…

but those aren’t taxed by nearly 200% are they?

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 Hmm. Alcohol is another drug too, where people die from alcohol related diseases and domestic violence in relation to that. Actions need to be taken in every aspect of society where there is a problem neither the private sector wants to handle, and people don’t deal with. Obesity is a problem. Compulsory eating disorder, is a mental problem.

It seems to me that your beef is with that you like your fags, don’t want to quit and you’re pissed that it costs you a mint doing it. That may be. Is it fair? I don’t know. Does it work making people smoke less? I don’t know. People are dying horrifically in great numbers cause of this shit, that people do to themselves and others.

So I mean again, as people don’t want to deal with it, the private companies want you to continue to smoke, the pharmaceutical companies makes a heap of money and people just continue to get sick and die in great numbers, what should we do about it, and how should we handle that?

Just let it be? Back off? I don’t think that is a solution? That seems more like duck and cover to me. This is killing more americans than any war ever, all the wars combined.

We can pretend that there is no problem, and claim that it is unamerican or socialism. The question is really this: why should we let the cigarettes take the lives of our children? That’s what it’s all about in my book. I don’t care if you lick the ashtray. But as you seem concerned about costs, who is paying for the care of your family when they get sick? That’s you, and all of the people in America.

Why not wish for our children to grow up, non-smokers. Now that is an American dream if there ever was one.

@uberbatman
Your excuse of harming yourself can really apply to anything, who are we to fight terrorism, who were we to enter WWII and stop hitler, who are we to stop gangs? We should have just let them harm mostly themselves.

@O when you get down to it, smoking, drinking, over eating, is personal choice. The companies that provide these goods are private enterprises. The government has no right taxing a private enterprise to such an egregiously high extent. whether you smoke, or I smoke has nothing to do with it, I’m speaking solely from the standpoint of a private company’s ability to conduct business.

Smoking is a tough guys/woman’s sport.

Forget all that sissy flavored stuff.

That is what they invented coffee and booze for and I do love a cup of coffee with my cig.

@Alek2407 no….that is completely different. That is the harm of others….

@uberbatman they weren’t mostly hurting us.

Terrorist have killed less then 5,000 Americans, Hitler accidentally sunk one US ship (before we attacked him), and gangs rarely kill non-gang members. Couldn’t we just have let the Arabs kill each other, let Europeans fight with themselves, and let gangs fight with each other?

@Alek2407….. the HARM OF OTHERS. Didnt say us, just other human beings.

@uberbatman exactly, they harmed themselves. Europeans killed Europeans, Arabs killed Arabs, gangsters kill gangsters, and smokers kill smokers. Almost nowhere where people on the outside (Americans) where harmed but we stopped them from killing themselves. Just like non-smokers are trying to save smokers.

@Alek2407 exactly, they harm themselves. Europeans killed other Europeans, Arabs killed other Arabs, gangsters kill other gangsters, but smokers kill themselves.

I’m having trouble making sense of what you’re trying to say.

Are you saying that it is OK for people from Virginia to kill each other because they are all from Virginia? Smokers harm themselves, not others (assuming they are not smoking around people who do not want to be around second hand smoke.) There is a difference between doing something that harms another human being and doing something that harms oneself.

what pete said.

So last night I went to the liquor store and picked up a bottle of BUBBLE GUM vodka. Why the fuck are clove cigarettes a problem for “enticing children to smoke” even though no one knows what they are but BUBBLE FUCKING GUM VODKA is totally cool.

the vodka was delicious though, i must say. Just like bazooka joe. ahhhh childhood.

Bubblegum Vodka?! Eeeeeewwwww!!!

@uberbatman you probably just turned me into an alcoholic, I didn’t know they made that…

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 im not a drinker, and its very rare i find something i actually like. This stuff is great. Its made by 3 olives couldnt look any more girly if they tried

@Darwin no really, its quite good. Mix it with some strawberry soda YUM.

I think the ban on flavored cigarettes is ridiculous. Most, if not all of the flavored cigarettes are/were somewhat higher in price, which left most beginning smokers to start with the cheapest or most available available types/brands of tobacco. In fact, most young smokers probably started by experimenting with the tobacco to which they had the quickest, easiest access, namely their parent’s/friend’s brand. Sure, a lot of them might eventually gravitate to the flavored brands, but it’s doubtful that they will start there. At least, that’s how it was in my particular case.
The ban will not deter young people (or anyone) from smoking if they really want to smoke. All it does is remove that option for any legal adults who enjoy smoking something a little different now and then.
How can the governments justify making flavored tobacco illegal when we already have fifty different flavors of vodka or a hundred different types of wine coolers or a thousand different flavors of Schnapps? If what they said was really true, shouldn’t flavored liquors also be banned for helping to turn kids into raging alcoholics? It’s all just backwash, bullshit and more unnecessary posturing from the anti-smoking crowd and has NO basis in fact.

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 – Then the new ‘cotton candy flavored vodka’ should give you a mammoth case of the DT’s.

@Rufus_T_Firefly “How can the governments justify making flavored tobacco illegal[...]”

Because they already made alcohol illegal once and it didn’t turn out so swell. But they’ve had their anti-smokers campaign going for a long time now so the populace are already conditioned to let the government do what they want.

My feeling, as I have said in other posts, is that our government is becoming much too restrictive, and if we let them ban cigarettes, spice, pot, when is it going to end? Already they have replaced all school cafeteria food with diet food. Makes me mad that they put my granddaughter on a diet because her classmates are fat! Next will be cola, booze, energy drinks, white bread, junk food. All of you holier-than-thou people will lose your little creature comforts, too. Just wait! We need to take this power away from the government NOW.

By the way, I don’t smoke spice or pot, and never have – not even in the 60’s when everyone was doing it. But yet I can still say that there is no logical reason that pot is illegal. And I don’t have a problem letting other adults make their own decisions. Imagine that!