Why are menthol cigarettes getting banned?

[Theodoreb]

Not that I smoke them I can’t actually stand them but why would they ban them?

Menthol masks the taste of the smoke so it tastes less harsh than a non-menthol cigarette and opens your airways up a bit so you inhale more deeply. Have you ever sucked a strong mint on a windy day and gotten that 'woosh' feeling down your nose and throat? That's how it feels to smoke a menthol cigarette.

It's all part of the general campaign to deter people from smoking, especially young people.

I think the idea is they taste like a sweet so would encourage youths to smoke. It's all BS anyway.

I listened to a podcast about the difference in the treatment of vaping in the USA and the UK. In the USA vaping is treated as an extension of smoking, in the UK it's treated as an assistance to stop smoking. As a result the US government is banning non tobacco flavoured vaping, as they think the different flavours will encourage youths to vape. This ignores the people who are looking to quit smoking via vaping, if vaping tastes like cigarettes then where's the appeal to stop smoking.

So short sited.

I almost (ALMOST) feel sorry for the tobacco industry in this country. Making a product that is perfectly legal but being told you can’t advertise it, you have to put warning signs and disturbing images on your own products, you can’t sell XYZ products and it can only be in X size now, oh, and people can’t actually see your product, it has to be behind a closed screen. But other than that, yes, you are free to sell it.

Whoa @rm1234! Relax! That's not what @TheNameGames said.

@rm1234 That's a bit harsh - @TheNameGames is just expressing the fact that it's a bit of a contradictory position to have a legal industry that's so incredibly strictly regulated, it's a strange space between legal and illegal.

Consumers make calculated risk decisions all the time and the cigarette companies don't force cigarettes into people's hands - people have to take responsibility for their decisions (and I say that as someone who smoked 'lightly' for nearly a decade).

I still think stopping them selling packs of 10s was stupid. If anything you should be stopping people from buying giant packs of them. Back in my youthful halcyon days I'd buy a pack of 10 on a friday night and they'd be gone by Sunday morning, those would be all the cigarettes I needed or wanted - five each on two nights out and then back to non-smoking during the week. I quit not long after they banned 10s (and haven't had any urge to restart) but for a while I would have packs of 20s hanging around in my bag and wind up having one on a Wednesday evening after work 'because it was there'.

I think the pack sizes went the wrong way too. They should have banned 20s and only made them available in packs of 10 to encourage people to buy less. I was a smoker many years ago, been twelve years since I smoked, and if I had a box of twenty for my nights out over the weekend you can bet I'd smoke all twenty just because they were there whereas with ten I'd smoke less of them to make the pack last longer and when they were all gone then they were all gone until I bought my next pack.

When I was at school you could buy a pack of 10 with your £1 dinner money, and split them with a friend so you still had 50p each for lunch. Buying a pack of 20 was out of the reach for most school kids and older teenagers so would make cigarettes harder to get hold of.

True @gingerkittykat but with the crackdown on ID I don't think that the ban on 10-packs reduced that sort of smoking nearly half as much as the punative fines imposed by councils on shops that sell to under 18s. I'm 31 and got refused a bottle of wine in a corner shop the other day because I didn't have my ID on me...

Both my parents are heavy duty smokers and mum buys them 200 cigarettes each every fortnight on the big shop. If you told them they could only buy 40 cigarettes maximum each time (like with max purchases of ibuprofen or baby milk, albeit for v different reasons) then I strongly suspect they'd eke out their allowance better. Obviously I'd love them to stop smoking but they're the ones who are going to be burdening the NHS with smoking-related health problems, rather than the 21 year olds who'll smoke a handful of Malboro Lights outside a nighclub on a Saturday night and would dream of just lighting up with their tea and toast on a Tuesday morning.

I hope this isn't true! Menthols are all I've ever smoked 😔 Tbh I've never seen a young person trying to buy cigarettes (I'm right beside a college and a secondary school) in any of the times I've been to the shops around here.

*nightclub

*wouldn't dream of just lighting up

God we need an edit button...

And yet (as above) bubblegum flavour vapes are advertised in foot high letters in the petrol station outside our senior school.

I agree about both pack sizes and the amount you can buy at once. Make it so you can only buy 10 at a time and smoking becomes even more inconvenient. I'm an ex occasional smoker and like others here if I'd had to buy 20 at a time I'd have smoked more.

Make it so you can only buy 10 at a time and smoking becomes even more inconvenient

Yes and no. I'm a smoker and I know some other smokers. Not one of us buys our cigarettes from a UK shop. I, and some of my friends, go on regular ciggie runs to Eastern Europe where we stock up on 6 months supply. Apparently, that is one thing that Brexit will not affect! We will still be allowed to do this.

The people I know who can't afford the initial outlay buy "under the counter". Smoking is being driven "underground" more and more. While all these rules and regulations may stop younger people from starting, which yes is a good thing. They've also pushed regular smokers into finding other ways, and of course this means none of us are now paying tax to the UK on our cigarettes.

of course this means none of us are now paying tax to the UK on our cigarettes

That's ok for you, but DP smokes and buys them in Asda. Along with lots of other people in the queue while I'm waiting to get lottery tickets... and nothing about affording "initial outlays" of buying 6 months worth and two trips abroad twice a year!

They all need banning, let's be honest.

I work behind the counter in the local (tiny) supermarket and sell a lot of cigarettes. I've often thought about sueing the cigarette companies for the stress I am going through, having to look at the pictures on the packets! They are horrible!

But I have yet to sell a pack to any smoker who's admitted to even looking at the pictures on the packet.

I don't understand it really. I smoke menthols now but I didn't start on them. If young people want to smoke, they'll find a way. They aren't influenced by the fact that you can get menthol cigarettes!

@meruem, that's a fair point. When I see fag packets littering the street they often seem to have Eastern Europran writing on. I expect there's a huge black market in foreign fags esp for heavy smokers.

I used to love a menthol. I didn't start on them but finished on them.

I didn’t start on menthol either..when I was a teen I’d smoke anything that looked remotely like a cigarette. I got pickier as I got older.

I’m an occasional smoker..I have smoked for such a long time I struggle to completely stop-but as it stands I buy a pack every 2 or 3 months, I guess I’m going to have to learn to like non menthol cigarettes.

And rolling tobacco

They are also banning loose/rolling tobacco and I believe "slim" cigarettes

Why are they banning rolling tobacco?

It's got less crap in it and IME people who smoke rollies tend to smoke less.

Now if they ban rolling tobacco I will be going on tobacco runs