Consumers Warned On Hazards Of “Herbal Cigarettes”

What do corn silk, banana skins, and weeds have in common? People desperate for a smoke have all used them in improvised cigarettes. If something can be rolled up and smoked, you can bet somebody, somewhere, has rolled it up and smoked it. Most of these experiments don't get very far, but a few non-tobacco substances have managed to catch on. In fact, "alternative" cigarettes have become a booming business. Some contain mixtures of herbs; some combine tobacco with cloves, dried tendu leaves (a plant from India and Southeast Asia), and other unusual ingredients.Alternative cigarettes -- sold at many convenience stores and over the Internet -- are easy to find and easy to buy, even for kids who aren't old enough to buy tobacco. They often look exotic and come in appealing flavors such as cherry or vanilla. But their biggest selling point is that they're supposed to be a healthy alternative to "real" cigarettes. As one online merchant of natural tobacco and clove cigarettes put it, "Gotta smoke? Smoke smart!"But despite this marketing ploy, alternative cigarettes are NOT safe. In fact, some are considerably more dangerous than normal cigarettes. As the director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Affairs recently stated, "There's no such thing as a safe smoke."Simply being free of additives -- or in the case of herbal cigarettes, free of nicotine -- doesn't make them safer," says Matthew Gold, a staff attorney for the FTC. "Any kind of cigarette you smoke has tar and carbon monoxide, which have very real health hazards associated with them." Gold recently won a case against Alternative Cigarettes, Inc. that forced the company to display health warnings on its products.

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