Ban on Flavored Cigars

There has been increasing concern over the use of flavored cigars to attract the youth towards tobacco as an alternative to cigarette smoking. They have the same negative effects of smoking cigarettes and cigars, but contain "candy-like flavoring." The main differences between cigars and cigarettes are the size and type of tobacco used to create the products. In response to the flavored cigars, senators Frank Lautenberg, Dick Durbin, Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Richard Blumenthal asked the FDA to ban the sale of flavored cigars, given the FDA's ability to regulate the sale of tobacco from the Family Smoking prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009. The cigar industry has fired back against the senators' call for the ban saying it would "devastate local stores."