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FDA bans sale of flavored cigarettes
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My (former, I guess) brand, via smokinacecigars.blogspot.com
So Tuesday was a sad day for Goth kids across the land: that's when the FDA ban on flavored cigarettes went into effect. I know that local stores were experiencing a run on them last week, with people buying them by the case. I don't know how you keep them fresh enough when you buy them in bulk, but still. If I hadn't been slogging my way back from Telluride on Monday, I might have bought a case myself.
The logic behind this move is of the usual "think of the children" variety. FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg explained the decision to reporters by saying that " . . . flavored cigarettes are a gateway for many children and young adults to become regular smokers."
I suppose I should be more approving of this move, what with being a parent and all, but I have to admit that of all the things I worry about my kids getting into, cloves are pretty far down on the list. Having been gothy in the 80s, I've known plenty of people who smoked cloves, and I never knew anyone who smoked them the way you would smoke a regular cigarette -- you can't smoke a pack of cloves every day, and they tend to function more like cigars. Pretty much the same way mango and grape flavored cigars tend to function like, well, cigars.
And yeah, kids shouldn't be dabbling with tobacco products at all, but I'd be a lot more impressed with a ban on regular cigarettes and chaw than this. The fact that Phillip Morris was heavily involved in this legislation, and that the wording goes out of it's way to protect tobacco companies, makes me pretty skeptical that this ban is even intended to keep kids away from smokes. Not to mention, everyone I know who took up smoking as a kid started with plain old cigs, with no candy flavoring necessary; the fact that, as reported in the above link, %80 of teen smokers prefer Marlboro seems to indicate that my experience is not unusual. I'm also wondering just how many smokers of cloves are kids: Bret Goodman, owner of Jerri's Tobacco Shop in Denver said that his clove customers were across the board, and even though it was a trend largely of 20-year-olds, there are some fifty- and sixty-somethings pretty upset by this legislation today. So it seems to me that this is just more legislation making a lot of pearl-clutching noise about saving kids but isn't actually going to make a dent in the number of kids who take up smoking each day.
Or maybe I'm just too cranky about the fact that one of my favorite treats, sitting on my porch after the kids are in bed, enjoying the flavor and aroma of a clove cigarette to be thinking with my parenting hat on. But I doubt it.
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