For youth, (grape) cigars are the new cigarette.

by Scout, Ph.D.

At The Fenway Institute

Grape flovored cigs? Peach? Appletini? Clearly, those target adults.

Folk might know the FDA now prohibits flavored cigarettes and other such ploys blatantly aimed at marketing to youth. The tobacco industry has long stood up and said they have stopped targeting youth. No more Joe Camel cartoons, it’s all about adults now. Well, we did a post on this long ago and sure enough, they’re still up to the same tricks. While FDA prohibits flavored cigarettes, flavored cigars are still fair game. Apparently, the tobacco industry has identified a big adult marketing niche, of people who’d be interested in bright purple packages of grape flavored cigars. Or peach flavored. Eventually the FDA will likely catch up and outlaw these too, but in the meantime, evidence from Maryland shows that high school prevalence of cigarette use is 9.6%, and cigar use is 9.5%. Clearly by the time FDA outlaws these… we’ll have decades of new youth addiction to battle. Ahh, tobacco control… always keeping us on our toes.