Importer tries to get around clove smoke ban (I feel safer now that we banned something)

[The Straight Story]

Importer tries to get around clove smoke ban

By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM (AP) – 5 days ago

RICHMOND, Va. — The nation's top distributor of clove cigarettes is offering fans a new way to get their fix after the spice-flavored cigarettes are banned later this year — cigars.

The new filtered cigars — close to the size of a cigarette and flavored with clove, vanilla and cherry — allow Kretek International Inc., which imports Djarum-brand tobacco products from Indonesia, to avoid new federal laws banning flavored cigarettes other than menthol.

The ban on flavored cigarettes, which critics say appeal to teenagers, goes into effect at the end of September. It doesn't include cigars.

The difference? Cigarettes are wrapped in thin paper, cigars in tobacco leaves. While the cigars also are made with a different kind of tobacco, the taste is similar. The cigars come 12 to a pack, rather than 20 for cigarettes, but cost nearly half as much.

The ban is one of the first visible effects of a new law signed by President Barack Obama in June that gives the Food and Drug Administration wide-ranging authority to regulate tobacco, though it can't ban nicotine or tobacco outright.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jZQ3Ygc0-ofXntFVVNoA8IusFU-QD9AIH5G81

The fundies won again, you can no longer commit certain sins - but the non-believers have found a way around the puritans.

I just don't know what I would do if people weren't pushing their beliefs and ideas down my throat and passing laws to save me. I would just be lost with such freedom.....

[present and past]

1. Do I Understand Correctly That ...

... the Food and Drug Administration can regulate but not ban tobacco? That seems to be how it's acting. It's banning these cigarettes but not cigars. That's regulating for you.

[HopeHoops]

2. I smoked those in the late 70's and early 80's, but they were NOTHING like the ones now!

Now they are just lightly flavored cigarettes - blech.

Back then, they were hand rolled (tightly) and might as well have been cigars. They burned for 25 minutes each and came in a 10 pack. No filters (although one brand did offer them that way). One puff would numb your lips and throat and you'd have a buzz within a few minutes. They were great for sore throats and mouth sores. They were REALLY expensive - like $1.85 a pack and eventually as much as $2.50! Camel unfiltered were about $.85 a pack, but I remember paying $1.25.

At the time, there were few places you couldn't smoke, including work. I had something burning from the moment I woke up until I passed out. I even had an ashtray on the back of the toilet so I could smoke in the shower. I'd go through a pack of clove cigarettes and two packs of Camel unfiltered in a day (at my worst). I quit a few months after I met my wife (Dec 84) and wouldn't be alive otherwise. My lungs are permanently damaged, no question.

Still, it sounds like they're going to use this as a way to restore clove cigarettes to what they were INTENDED to be, instead of the wimpy-ass flavored ultra-lite things they have become.