As If the Tax Hike Wasn’t Enough, Feds Ban Flavored Cigarettes

Posted by Enrique on 10.01.2009

For your own good...



In yet another tedious example of state meddling with adults' personal behavior in the name of Protecting America's Youth™, the Food and Drug Administration has banned the sale of flavored cigarettes. This latest indignity comes seven months after President Barack Obama and his congressional allies hiked the federal cigarette tax by more than 150%. Since the president is a former (?) cigarette smoker himself, his continual interference with the rapidly-shortening lives of his erstwhile brethren is particularly galling. No one likes a turncoat.

The FDA sold this new policy as a way to prevent young Americans from smoking, citing one study that showed teenagers are three times more likely to smoke flavored cigarettes than adults. Even if that claim wasn't misleading (which it is), isn't it a little silly to worry about the smoking habits of adolescents when cigarette use has been on a massive decline for years? Why can't smokers just have their fruity fags? You've taken almost everything else from them – let them just have this one thing. Smokers are patriots, too.

The story so far…


Never gets old

The "flavor country" ban went into effect last week, and presumably the FDA expects us to be grateful for saving us from ourselves. Other than parents, who better to protect American children from the tragic consequences of teenage rebellion than self-important regulators?

"Almost 90 percent of adult smokers start smoking as teenagers. These flavored cigarettes are a gateway for many children and young adults to become regular smokers," said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. "The FDA will utilize regulatory authority to reduce the burden of illness and death caused by tobacco products to enhance our Nation's public health."

Flavors make cigarettes and other tobacco products more appealing to youth. Studies have shown that 17 year old smokers are three times as likely to use flavored cigarettes as smokers over the age of 25.

"Flavored cigarettes attract and allure kids into lifetime addiction," said U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Howard K. Koh, M.D., M.P.H. "FDA's ban on these cigarettes will break that cycle for the more than 3,600 young people who start smoking daily."

I'm sure we would all prefer if teenagers didn't take up smoking habits. And I'm sure many of us who made that choice when we were teenagers wish we could have a do-over. That said, how can we be sure this ban will have an appreciable impact? The FDA says "studies have shown" teenagers are more likely to smoke flavored cigarettes than 25-year-olds. Not to be picky, but the press release only cites one study called "Use of Flavored Cigarettes among Older Adolescent and Adult Smokers: United States 2004-2005." Regrettably, I've been unable to locate a free version of the study online. The best I can do are abstracts such as this one, which indicate the report was compiled based on two telephone surveys several years ago. Two of the key findings were:

-In the [first survey], smokers that reported using flavored cigarettes most often were individuals 17 years of age (22.8%) and those 18–19 years of age (21.7%).

-Of the smokers in the [first survey] (age range from 17–26 years), 11.9 percent reported flavored cigarette use in the past 30 days. Among the [second survey] sample (age 25 and older), 6.7 percent of smokers reported flavored cigarette use.

As far as I'm aware, the legal smoking age is 18 in all U.S. states. For the most part, this data reflects the smoking preferences of legal adult smokers. As for the 17-year-olds, almost 23% of them reported smoking a flavored cigarette in the past 30 days. I don't mean to be obvious, but not every 17-year-old who smoked a cigarette a few weeks ago is destined for a lifetime of addiction.

Despite what you may have been led to believe, many people are capable of smoking occasional cigarettes without developing a serious habit. As of June, President Obama admitted he still indulged in the intermittent cigarette. I may be biased, but this study doesn't exactly suggest some kind of underage smoking pandemic is in our future. I'm sure there is a chance flavored malt beverages might encourage underage drinking, but that doesn't mean the FDA should ban Mike's Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice.

These FDA busybodies probably have the best intentions, but the fact is flavored cigarettes represent a very small share of the cigarette market. According to Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman, the FDA ban will have no noticeable effect on hot teen smoking habits. But he does have some good news:

[T]he number of kids using these products can't be very large. Michael Siegel, a physician and public health professor at Boston University, says that 87 percent of all high school smokers choose Marlboro, Camel or Newport, which don't come in tutti-frutti flavors.

No surprise there. Siegel says that teenagers smoke because they want to seem older. But smoking something that tastes like bubble gum sends the opposite signal. Even when flavored cigarettes were more widely available, the great majority of adolescent smokers found them about as appealing as a Raffi concert. […]

Lost in the government's propaganda is that if the tobacco companies are trying to recruit kids into smoking, they are doing a very poor job at it. Last year, the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Survey found that smoking among high school seniors is at the lowest level in the 33 years the project has been keeping track. Among eighth-graders, tobacco use is down by two-thirds since the mid-1990s; among 12th-graders, smoking rates have fallen by nearly half. Only 11 percent of 12th-graders smoke every day.

In other words, there was no compelling reason for government action here. It's just the state meddling in the affairs of a disfavored minority. If the FDA really cared about the dangers of flavored cigarettes, then it's peculiar the most popular cigarette flavor – menthol – wasn't included in the ban, no? FDA regulators may not be a bunch of grandstanding weasels, but they do a dead-on impersonation.

Brave heart, smokers. If you're a fan of flavored cigarettes, you'll still be able to get your hands on them. If we've learned anything from the failed war on drugs, it's that prohibition can't eliminate a product people want to buy, even if there's limited demand. As long as there's a market, some creative manufacturer will find a way to serve it:

The top distributor of clove-flavored tobacco products in the U.S. is asking a federal court to decide whether its new filtered cigars fall under a new federal ban on flavored cigarettes.

Kretek International Inc., which imports Djarum brand tobacco products from Indonesia, sued the Food and Drug Administration Sept. 22. […]

Moorpark, Calif.-based Kretek International recently began selling small filtered spice-flavored cigars that are close to the size of a cigarette but are wrapped in tobacco rather than paper and contain cigar tobacco. As part of the lawsuit, it is asking for a judgment from the court that its new products do not fall under the FDA's current ban.

I fondly remember smoking clove cigaret—ahem—cigars in my late teens. I suppose I'll have to give them a fresh look. And if the FDA eventually decides to ban them as well, no doubt there will be other options. Ultimately, this FDA action will have a negligible effect on teen smoking habits. But I'm sure several asshole bureaucrats feel better about themselves for capriciously exercising their power to interfere with the conduct of our private lives. In the end, that's what it's really all about.