Bursting With Flavor

By Melissa Kress Associate Editor

Citing youth appeal, some lawmakers are pushing for a ban on flavored cigars

More than two years have passed since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned all flavored cigarettes, except for tobacco and menthol. The move was one of the first by the agency after it received the power to regulate the tobacco industry under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009.

Recently, Convenience Store News was curious to find out whether this has driven adult flavored cigarette smokers to other flavored tobacco products such as cigars. Turns out that while flavored cigars are ranked among the top-selling SKUs, as reported in the CSNews 2011 Tobacco Industry Handbook published in September, the industry itself does not see any crossover.

"The FDA ban on flavored cigarettes hasn't had an impact on our market at all," said Joe Augustus, senior vice president of external affairs for Swisher International. "When the FDA enacted the ban, there really weren't a lot of flavors in the cigarette market, aside from menthol [which is not included in the ban] and clove. Plus, we are very different markets. There is no real crossover between the cigarette and cigar market."

Given the ban on flavors in the cigarette segment, however, one must wonder if a similar ban in the cigar segment is far behind. If some federal lawmakers have their way, it could be sooner than the industry thinks, or likes.

In December, U.S. Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg urging the agency to expand the flavor ban to cigars.

"Congress helped protect young people from the harmful effects of tobacco by banning flavored cigarettes. But as youth cigarette use has fallen, cigars have become more popular among adolescents. In some states, cigar use surpasses cigarette use among high school males," the legislators wrote.

The cigar industry is hoping the FDA will look at the numbers before moving on any more flavor bans. According to Augustus, the federal lawmakers urging the ban are working under an unsupported assumption that flavored cigars attract a younger market. Specifically, he pointed to two recent studies that revealed cigar use among youths has actually dropped.

The 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that cigar usage among 12- to 17-yearolds declined from 4.5 percent to 3.2 percent from 2002 to 2010. And, as Augustus further noted, a study by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research revealed that small cigar usage by youths decreased by almost 4 percent from 2010 to 2011.

"We are absolutely concerned about it, but we trust the FDA, which is a science-based agency, to follow where the data leads them and determine there is no basis to ban flavored cigars," Augustus said.

He wonders, why all the concern now, anyway? After all, flavored cigars are nothing new. "There have been flavored cigars as long as the category has existed," he said.

Any FDA action against flavored cigars would certainly be cause for concern among cigar manufacturers, in general. However, Swisher's core business is still the non-flavored Swisher Sweets cigarillo product, he added.

"Flavor is important to us, but it is only one third of our cigarillo business," Augustus said. "That hasn't changed in the past few years."