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Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Omaha World-Herald Once cool, now cold: Clove cigarettes are now illegal in the United States. So are cherry, strawberry, lime, chocolate and any other candy or fruit flavored cigarettes. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration imposed a ban Tuesday on those particular smokes. It's part of a phase-in of a host of tobacco product and marketing regulations in the new Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act. Congress passed the act, and President Barack Obama signed it, in June. U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, joined the American Lung Association and many others in praising Tuesday's ban as a strike against youth smoking. “Today we are seeing the first regulations in a decades-long effort to prevent cigarette smoking, and it couldn't start with a better age group, one of our most vulnerable,” Harkin said in a statement. “Banning the marketing and use of strawberry, chocolate and other flavored cigarettes will help slow the rate of addiction among young smokers, preventing disease and saving millions in health care costs down the line.” In Omaha, Mark Welsch, president of the Group to Alleviate Smoking Pollution Inc., said it was good to ban flavored cigarettes. But he said menthol cigarettes also should be banned. The act leaves menthol up for further study. Welsch also was critical of the larger act. Jason Brown, general manager of Colombo Candy & Tobacco Wholesale in Omaha, said the ban won't have a large impact. He agreed with a U.S. News & World report that said the affected cigarettes make up 1 percent or less of the market. Brown said cigarette makers had already stopped producing most fruit-flavored cigarettes more than a year ago in anticipation of the legislation. The ban mainly will affect, Brown said, such clove-flavored cigarettes as Djarum, and such cherry-flavored cigarettes as Dreams. He said he expects makers of those products to make them in cigars, which apparently would not be covered by the new ban. “I think it (the ban) is wrong,” said Brown, who doesn't believe that flavored smokes are aimed at kids. “It's America. It's your choice to smoke or not.”
http://www.omaha.com/article/20090923/NEWS01/709239921
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