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Island councilmen concur in ban on products that look more like candy than cigarettes
Jump to full article: Staten Island (NY) Advance, 2009-10-15
Author: PETER N. SPENCER ADVANCE CITY HALL BUREAU
Intro: They are sold right next to the candy and gum at stores across Staten Island -- products like strawberry-flavored mini-cigars packaged like lip gloss.
And they will soon be illegal.
Calling it a move that will help save children from a dangerous addiction, the City Council voted yesterday to ban sales of almost all flavored tobacco products, including small cigars and chewing tobacco.
The bill, expected to be signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is the latest bit of bad news for the tobacco industry and smokers in the city, who already have been banned from all public buildings and restaurants and have seen taxes on cigarettes skyrocket.
Yesterday's ban is intended to close a loophole in a law enacted in June by the federal Food and Drug Administration banning the manufacture, importation, marketing and distribution of cigarettes made to taste like candy, fruit and cloves. Since the legal definition of a cigarette is vague, manufacturers found a way to circumvent the ban by repackaging products to make them attractive to kids, like smaller "cigarillos" and SNUS, pouches of flavored tobacco used like snuff.
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