Some additives in cigarettes will disappear this year, while in Kansas and other states, a new additive will become commonplace.
The Federal Drug Administration has banned sales of flavored tobacco products, with the exception of menthol, as of Sept. 22. Beginning July 1 of this year, a copolymer is being added to cigarettes sold in Kansas to produce what is known as a “Fire Safe Cigarette,” or FSC. It is intended to extinguish itself if the cigarette has not been used for 30 to 35 seconds, thus reducing the number of fires started by unattended cigarettes.
The banning of flavored cigarettes is intended to discourage youngsters from starting to smoke. The cigarettes, which come in an assortment of flavors, are considered a gateway for moving on to smoking regular tobacco cigarettes.
Section 907 of the law, which describes tobacco product standards, states: “Beginning three months after enactment of the legislation (September 22, 2009), a cigarette or any of its component parts (including the tobacco, filter or paper) are forbidden from having as a constituent (including a smoke constituent) or additive, an artificial or natural flavor (other than tobacco or menthol) or an herb or spice, including strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon, pineapple, vanilla, coconut, licorice, cocoa, chocolate, cherry, or coffee, that is a characterizing flavor of the product or its smoke.
“The FDA is not limited in its authority to take action applicable to menthol or any artificial or natural flavor, herb, or spice not specified above.”
“They’re already a thing of the past,” said Melissa Mercer, manager of Cigarette Outlet. “We’re no longer able to get them. Our distributor’s already quit” filling orders for flavored cigarettes.
“We knew it was coming,” Mercer said of the rules change. “We just didn’t know when or how harsh it was going to be.”
Mercer said that customers from 18 to 80 were fond of flavored cigarettes. One woman already has purchased Cigarette Outlet’s entire supply of Vanilla Sweet Dreams in anticipation of the ban.
“There’s a lot of people buy a pack of those once every several months, just because it’s something different,” Mercer said.
Flavored cigarettes also were popular with college students. Some customers purchased them to smoke while they were out socializing at bars and private parties.
It wasn’t just the college students and older teenagers who enjoyed a flavored cigarette while they were socializing.
Elaina Cahoj, a clerk at Graves Drugs who had been “very much against smoking,” learned that her college-student daughter had smoked flavored cigarettes. Cahoj decided to try one, to see what her daughter found enjoyable.
The taste didn’t appeal to Cahoj then.
Later, though, socializing at a karaoke night about 12 years ago, someone handed her a clove-flavored cigarette. Cloves and karaoke seemed to go hand-in-hand.
“One night, none of us had any, and I smoked a regular cigarette,” Cahoj said.
The regular cigarettes quickly became a habit; it’s one that she continues today.
“The friend who started me on the clove cigarettes, he always felt so bad,” Cahoj said. “I was definitely old enough to know better.”
And she still prefers the taste of the clove cigarettes to the regular variety, though beginning next month, she will not be able to purchase them.
Glen Hadaway, owner of Graves Drugs, another popular tobacco outlet, said that his company had not been notified of the change in the law and, instead, heard about it through an announcement from a tobacco supplier.
“We didn’t get official notice, no,” said Hadaway, who read about the change this month in a memo from the supplier.
Hadaway said that Graves had a limited number of customers for the clove and other flavors of cigarettes.
“We just carried it because people requested we do it,” he said.
Hadaway intends to continuing stocking and selling tobacco products as long as they are legal, although he would much prefer that authorities make up their minds whether to make tobacco illegal rather than taking inch-by-inch measures to reduce the numbers of people who smoke.
“They need to do it or not do it,” Hadaway said. “I don’t care, they need to go one way or the other. They’ve made it so expensive for legitimate retailers to carry tobacco products. … It’s a real hassle.”
“Sting” operations by tobacco enforcement agencies seem to happen constantly, he said. And, like other stores that sell tobacco, the employees are well-trained to verify ages before selling tobacco products.
He does not expect the disappearance of flavored cigarettes to have measureable impact on his company.
“It’s such a small part of our business, it’s totally manageable,” he said, adding that more than anything else, “it’s annoying.”
Mercer wonders why flavored tobacco is being banned as a gateway-type drug, but flavored alcohol is not.
She also wonders whether the government has polluted cigarettes with health hazards that were not there before.
Some of her customers believe they are being sickened by the additive — often ethylene vinyl acetate — required in Kansas and other states to make “Fire Safe Cigarettes,” which are identified with the initials “FSC” on cigarette packages.
EVA is a copolymer of ethylene and vinyl acetate, 10 to 40 percent being vinyl acetate and the remainder being ethylene.
EVA is added in rings to the cigarette paper; if the smoker is not inhaling when the lit part of the cigarette reaches the chemical ring, the cigarette will self-extinguish, making it less likely to start a fire.
“I had the state in in July, making sure my cigarettes were fire-safe,” Mercer said.
Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma already require FSCs, she said; Missouri does not.
Mercer said that each day, some customers complain that they have become sick because of the fire-retarding additives in the cigarettes.
“Today we probably had five people in here saying they’ve been sick over them,” Mercer said Tuesday afternoon.
Among them, she said, were a law enforcement officer and a waitress.
“The doctor tells her it’s not pneumonia,” Mercer said. “It’s these cigarettes. I think FDA’s doing more damage than they are helping anybody. … They were hoping it would make people quit. It’s making people sick.”
source: http://www.emporiagazette.com
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