Govt urged to ban flavoured cigarettes

BANGKOK: -- Health officials on Tuesday urged the Excise Department to reconsider a ban on manufacturing and import of flavoured cigarettes which target more young smokers.

Dr. Hathai Chitanondh, head of Thailand's Health Promotion Institute (THPI), said overseas tobacco companies have found a new tactic to lure more teenagers into smoking--adding various flavours including chocolate, vanilla and mint.

He said the flavoured cigarettes would increase health risk for smokers due to additional chemicals even though the manufacturers have said otherwise.

''They are more dangerous as flavour pellets inside the cigarette filter turns into new toxic fumes when burned. That is besides some 69 kinds of cancer-inducing agents a smoker would get from a normal cigarette," he said.

According to Dr. Narong Sahamethapat, deputy director-general of Department of Disease Control, his office's attempt to get the Excise Department to ban imports of artificially flavoured cigarettes failed. However, "flavoured cigarettes are already being sold illegally in Thailand despite the absence of a government permission,'' he said.

''Alternatively, we could seek an amendment to a ministerial regulation to ban the flavoured cigarettes but that process would take six months or a year,'' he said.

--TNA 2006-10-03

Will this include the flavored hookahs available in the middle eastern hang-outs?

Or menthol-cigarettes, such as those manufactured in Thailand, by the government company ?

Although, to be strictly correct, those generally use a flavour-additive contained in the foiled-paper, which then permeates the tobacco, rather than a flavour sprayed directly onto the tobacco.

However I believe some imported cigarettes may add extra flavour, to low-tar tobacco, as well ?

Why not just ban all cigarettes? This plan is as dumb as the one in place in the US... here the gov't restricts smoking in most public places, considers tobacco smoke a carcinogen (sp?), etc, etc... and yet still provides tobacco growers farm subsidies.

I wish the gov't here and in LOS would make an absolute mandate to ban cigarettes/cigars or just back off entirely. What point are they trying to make?

What about the clove flavoured cigarettes from Indonesia?

Are these included?

However I believe some imported cigarettes may add extra flavour, to low-tar tobacco, as well ?

There is no such thing as "low tar" tobacco.