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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Sometimes a Watermelon-Flavored Cigarette Is Just a Cigar

When is a cigarette not a cigarette? When it's a jar!

Oh, wait, that's a door.

The above question becomes positively talmudic in light of new FDA regulations banning the sale of flavored cigarettes. ("Flavors Banned From Cigarettes to Deter Youths") The concern is that flavored cigarettes with names like "Twista Line," "Kauai Kolada," "Warm Winter Toffee," and "Smoky Quesadilla" (only one of those is made up) serve as "gateway" products enticing kids to smoke. As if phallic-nosed cartoon camels weren't enough. The problem? "The legislation left some details vague. For instance, the agency is required to ban flavored cigarettes, but the law did not clearly define what constituted a cigarette."

Not quite as ludicrous as it sounds. Not all tobacco products are cigarettes--cigars and "cigarillos," for instance, the latter of which are "larger than a small cigar, but smaller than a premium hand-rolled cigar." Get out your tape measures, FDA! Because in theory the legislation permits the sale of flavored tobacco products that are not cigarettes. When your local mafioso wants to unwind after whacking a member of a rival family, he can purchase a Tutti-Frutti Hand-wrapped Havana without fear of FDA reprisal. But this puts FDA agents in the difficult position of having to determine, if you will, when a cigarette is not just a cigarette. As one tobacconist reports, she (and let's hear it for female tobacconists!) was told by an agent "to remove every flavored tobacco product from her shelves that 'looked like a cigarette' but [the agent] could not define what that meant."

Paging Dr. Freud.

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