… bills aimed at restricting access to tobacco products.
Maine lawmakers targeting ‘little cigars,’ flavored smokes
Feb. 19, 2007
Meg Haskell
Meg Haskell
Smokers, tobacco companies and their defenders are smoldering over recent anti-tobacco initiatives in Maine, including a city ordinance in Bangor that prohibits smoking in vehicles when children are present and a proposed $1-a-pack increase in the state cigarette tax.
They will have another fight on their hands soon, when state lawmakers submit bills aimed at restricting access to tobacco products.
One measure, being sponsored by Rep. John Brautigam, D-Falmouth, seeks to reclassify “little cigars” as cigarettes, making them subject to the same state taxes as cigarettes. Several states already tax little cigars as cigarettes.
Little cigars look like cigarettes, except they’re brown. They can be purchased where cigarettes and other tobacco products are sold. They contain the same amount of tobacco filling as cigarettes and they usually have a filter.
The essential difference is in the makeup of the wrapper: In little cigars, tobacco leaf is added to the papermaking slurry. This addition allows manufacturers to classify the product as a “little cigar” — neatly sidestepping Maine’s current $2-a-pack cigarette tax — possibly $3, if Gov. John Baldacci has his way. The governor’s proposal is contained within his biennial budget, under debate in Augusta.
“These things are cigarettes in everything but name,” Brautigam said Friday. “All you have to do is sprinkle a little tobacco leaf in the slurry and — voila! — it’s a cigar.”
The average price of a pack of 20 cigarettes in Maine is nearly $6; for little cigars, with their tax of just 17 cents for a 20-pack, it is just $2.40. Unlike cigarettes, which can be sold only in 20-unit packs, little cigars can be sold in various quantities, including singles. Some are flavored to taste like candy, fruit or liquor, and many are brightly packaged to look more like candy or cosmetics than a butt.
They are not required to carry health risk information on the label, the way cigarettes are.
Brautigam said expanding Maine’s definition of a cigarette to include little cigars would deter young people from smoking and add $1 million to $2 million to the state’s General Fund each year.
A second measure, sponsored by Sen. Peter Mills, R-Skowhegan, would prohibit the selling of flavored cigars and cigarettes in Maine, including those tasting of candy, fruit or alcohol. Menthol-flavored tobacco products would be exempt.
On Friday, Mills was unable to discuss the specifics of the legislation because he had not yet approved the final language. But he said the intention is to get rid of products designed to appeal to a new generation of young smokers.
Mills noted that tobacco products have long been flavored in one way or another, such as cherry-flavored pipe tobacco or fancy cigars steeped in cognac. He acknowledged that it would be tricky to write enforceable legislation that protects young people without treading on the rights of general consumers.
Mills, a practicing attorney, said he already has been approached by lobbyists from the tobacco industry trying to discourage the effort by pointing out the difficulty of banning only some flavored products.
“I regard it as a courtesy,” he said, referring to the lobbyists’ contacts with him. “I don’t intend to write a bill that isn’t going to work.” Still, he expects to defend his legislation against “one of the biggest lobbying powerhouses in the country.”
Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America, acknowledged that he is well aware of the efforts in Maine and said his organization will vigorously oppose them on behalf of the many manufacturers of little cigars.
Sharp said there’s no evidence that smokers switch from cigarettes to little cigars because they’re less expensive. Even with the filter, “little cigars are stronger than most smokers are willing to put up with,” he said.
Younger smokers are particularly unlikely to go for little cigars, he said, even those products that are flavored like chocolate or watermelon or creme de menthe. Flavoring tobacco products is “a time-honored tradition,” he said, not some new marketing strategy aimed at young consumers.
According to Sharp, little cigars account for a tiny fraction of tobacco sales in this country. In 2005, for example, sales of little cigars totaled $312 million compared with $82 billion for cigarettes. This means there are more cigarettes sold in two days than little cigars in a whole year, he said — and that Maine is unlikely to realize significant revenues by reclassifying them.
Sharp noted that a recent attempt by the city of Philadelphia to ban the sale of individually packaged flavored cigars has resulted in an expensive lawsuit against the city.
According to Becky Smith of the Maine Coalition on Smoking or Health, the popularity of little cigars is on the rise across the country as well as in Maine. Nationwide, imports have increased by 500 percent in the past 10 years.
In Maine, tax revenues from sales of “all other tobacco” — other than cigarettes, that is — have risen by 40 percent since 2004. In the Maine Youth Drug and Alcohol Use Survey administered every two years to high school students, teenagers indicate their use of little cigars is increasing.
“The tobacco industry should not be allowed to self-regulate,” Smith said Friday. “Consumers believe these are cigarettes, and they should be called what they are.”
Smith pointed out that little cigars are both affordable and easy to conceal, making them especially attractive to underage buyers.
“Flavored cigarettes and cigars are the tobacco industry’s latest attempt to hook teens and young adults by making their products more palatable,” she said. A pastel-colored plastic tube containing a single, cherry-flavored little cigar costs about 69 cents, she said, and could easily be mistaken for a tube of lip gloss in a young woman’s purse or pocket.
