FDA Banishes Cloves From Cigarettes

We'll admit it. We tried clove cigarettes. Once. In college.

It was a terrible experience, and sitting near somebody smoking them was even worse than the half-dozen numbing puffs we took ourselves.

So we imagine most kids, other than a few wannabe bohemians, are celebrating the federal ban of clove cigarettes, along with all other flavored cigarettes—except menthol

 

Those flavored cigs are the gateway drug that get many kids smoking in the first place, so the Food and Drug Administration, now vested with all sorts of tobacco-busting powers, lowered the boom on them today.

What's out? The FDA doesn't have a comprehensive list by product, but the verboten flavorings include "strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon, pineapple, vanilla, coconut, licorice, cocoa, chocolate, cherry, or coffee."

Anything that doesn't taste like tobacco, other than menthol, is out. If you thought you could get around the ban by rolling your own cigs with flavored paper, sorry, that's banned too.

If there's a loophole, it's for what the FDA calls "bona fide pipe tobacco," which can still be flavored. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.