Politics & Government

Should Flavored Cigars Be Banned? Sen. Blumenthal Thinks So

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is pushing for flavored cigars to go the way of flavored cigarettes.


In 2009, the federal government passed a law that banned nearly all flavored cigarettes. 

Yet four years later, while flavored cigarettes are all but gone, flavored cigars line the shelves of convenience stores and head shops across the country. For U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., that needs to stop.

“Continued delay by the (Food and Drug Administration) in regulating new flavored cigars and other tobacco products is inexcusable and unacceptable,” Blumenthal told The Hartford Courant.“Deserving of most severe condemnation are big tobacco companies that shamelessly continue to exploit, addict, and ultimately kill kids and then adults,” said Blumenthal, a Greenwich resident.

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Last weekend, The New York Times ran a story about the issue, saying that flavored cigars are particularly popular for poor, young customers. In the story, multiple lawmakers and industry experts are quoted as saying that the cigars, which come in flavors like grape and Da Bomb Blueberry, should be eliminated for the same reason flavored cigarettes were eliminated: because they are made for children.

“The 20th century was the cigarette century, and we worked very hard to address that,” Gregory N. Connolly, the director of theCenter for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard School of Public Health, told The New York Times. “Now the 21st century is about multiple tobacco products. They’re cheap. They’re flavored. And some of them you can use anywhere.”

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