I'll admit, when I was a kid, I was allowed to eat candy "cigarettes," those little sugar sticks with red tips that came in a box that looked like a pack of cigarettes ... or the gum that had powder under the wrapper so you could blow on it to create puffs of smoke. That was back in the day, and now that the dangers of smoking are so well known, I had assumed that these candies were no longer manufactured. No such luck! Candy and gum resembling tobacco products are still available -- as I quickly found out when my 5 year old (who thinks smoking is gross) thought it was so cool to find a candy pack and tell me that he had cigarettes.
My thought is that these candies are undermining nationwide efforts to prevent tobacco among youth. However, I also have to admit that eating these candies never enticed me into becoming an actual smoker. Never, not once, did I ever have the urge to try a cigarette regardless of my exposure. Still, I believe for the most part that it does give the message that tobacco is cool and fun.
What do you think about candy-tobacco products?
1. I was in the mall with my sister's kids and my kids and they thought it would be fun to get candy cigs and freak out my sister when she came out of another store. The store clerk gave them a lecture about how bad smoking was and how he wished he'd never started. We waited in line for at the food court and the pizza guy gave them a lecture. A man cleaning tables saw them and gave them a lecture. By the time my sister caught up to us, that had talked to three real life remorse-filled smokers and were farther from actual smoking than ever. The influence is unrelated and may in fact be negative if they mock smoking while they play with the candy.
Posted at 6:53PM on Aug 30th 2007 by plannedscapes