"Little Cigars" Are Cigarettes

If it looks like a cigarette, feels like a cigarette and smokes like a cigarette — it must be a cigarette. At least that's what 39 states and Guam are saying about "little cigars."

Many little cigars should be reclassified as cigarettes, the officials said Thursday, meaning they would have to carry health-warning labels and be subject to higher taxes and marketing restrictions that are imposed on cigarettes, but not on cigars."

Call a cigarette a cigarette. I've got them in front of me. There isn't any question these are cigarettes," Montana Attorney General Mike Mcgrath said Thursday in a telephone interview. "It's peach flavored. Now who would want a peach flavored cigar? Maybe a high school girl."

Calvin Phelps, president and CEO of Alternative Brands Inc., which produces little cigars for several companies, said little cigars are made with tobacco that is different from the tobacco in cigarettes. He also said the wrappers used for little cigars are made from tobacco, which is different from the paper used to roll cigarettes."

Little cigars have been around about as long as cigarettes have," Phelps said. "If they know of unscrupulous manufacturers they should be punishing the offenders not the industry as a whole."

Sales of little cigars have increased even as cigarette sales have dropped in recent years, the attorneys general said. They pointed to federal statistics showing consumption of little cigars has more than doubled in the past decade.

The little cigars also are sometimes flavored to appeal to young people, and they often look just like cigarettes except for their brown color, the officials said.

...it's a Clayton cigar..."a cigar when your not really having a cigar"

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