The Globe and Mail recently highlighted a report on cigarillo and cigarette usage among young Canadians, and the results are shocking. Numbers of Grade 10-12 students who regularly smoke cigarettes has reached 13%, up two percent from last year. Numbers of those students in the same grades who have tried cigarettes topped 50%, with 80% of grade 6-9 students answering yes to the same question. Similar concerns trouble American health advisors and parents.
While these figures should alarm parents and cancer organizations, more alarming is the news that cigarillos now attract their own crowd of smokers. Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada considers these cigars as a snare that gets kids addicted to nicotine. The difference between cigarettes and cigars is mainly the wrapper: cigarettes come wrapped in paper; cigars in tobacco leaf. Restrictions, however, differ widely between the two products. Whereas cigarette packages and individual sticks come labeled on both sides with warnings, cigarillos need only carry warnings on the bottom back side of a package.
Worse still, available individually for about the cost of a chocolate bar, packets sell more cheaply than cigarettes says the Physicians website. If low prices fail to attract customers, however, flavors will.
Both conventional and on-line cigar shops sell fruit, rum, café crème, even chocolate flavored cigarillos. In appearance, many items resemble sticks of candy, chunky felt pens or lip gloss. Cigarettes and cigars may look boring, but these brightly colored nicotine sticks resemble the kinds of items children use (and parents approve of) all of the time.
Two years ago The Globe and Mail exposed this issue and manufacturers denied their intention to attract under-age sales. They argued that they only did what alcohol manufacturers had done, adding attractive fruit flavors to their products, marketing to consumers of legal age. Arguments abound that similar marketing strategies in alcohol sales have led to the same dangers, leading kids to consume something that tastes like pop without realizing the risks they take. Ironically, links exist between smoking and alcohol or drug use according to the recent Globe and Mail article, which makes such comparisons all the more revealing.
Getting a hold of contraband has never posed a problem for teenagers. Older siblings, adults or friends of legal age willing to buy: they have always been around. On-line marketing just makes getting past the question of identification that much easier.
The next time you see your child with something resembling a felt-tip pen in his mouth, take another look. He may be chewing on tobacco, with the same potential consequences as if he smoked on cigarettes without understanding the risk.
Written by Candice Lucey
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