In the USA, there is a ban that was enacted this year on the production by companies, import, or sale of flavoured cigarettes. This includes components for rolling one's own, as well: filters, rolling papers, and tobacco meant for use in roll-your-own cigarettes. However, this does not appear to apply to loose pipe tobacco which is sold as such. What else can pipe tobacco be used for? One guess.
Supposedly, the aim is to prevent teenagers from smoking. Oddly, I've never met anyone who started up on flavoured cigarettes that weren't menthol - which isn't banned. Whether or not it's particularly effective is up for debate; at least, I've yet to find an actual citation for surveys indicating that teenagers begin to smoke on flavoured cigarettes. Unless by flavour they do mean menthol, which is popular, perhaps for its numbing effect.
This doesn't effect the legality of hookah shisha, either. Hookah being wildly popular among college students and younger people in general (and carding being
ridiculously lax at any hookah bar I've ever visited, in and out of Chicago, although those could be exceptions), I wonder when it will it will be the next target?
The prohibition feels somewhat toothless, given the menthol exception, and the possibility of an individual's ability to still wiggle past the law (as far as I can tell, it's not illegal to make flavoured cigarettes for one's own use; there's nothing keeping individuals from making their own mixes, nor flavouring tobacco themselves). I'll be curious to see if it has any real effect on smoking among teenagers.
While the plural of anecdote is obviously not anecdata, I suspect from my experience that it won't. I'd like to see the numbers, a few years from now.
![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
