Source: Fairmont (MN) Sentinel
Date: 2010-02-12
Author:  Kylie Saari — Staff Writer,

The brightly colored boxes and flip-top containers promise
cherry, chocolate, mint and grape flavors. What they deliver are
highly addictive, kid-attracting, disease-inducing tobacco in the
form of mini-cigars.

That is according to a report released by ClearWay Minnesota and
the Association for Nonsmokers - Minnesota, two nonprofit
organizations dedicated to a smoke-free state.

Unfiltered, the first report of its kind, was released Wednesday
and calls the tobacco companies out for alleged continued
advertising to kids and teens.

The flavored mini-cigars out-maneuver laws that prohibit
cigarette companies from mixing child-friendly flavors into their
products. Mini-cigars are the same size as cigarettes, come in
similar packaging, but are exempt from the laws simply because
they are have tobacco in their wrapping, making them cigars, not
cigarettes.

"People think it isn\'t an issue anymore," said Mike Sheldon,
communications manager with ClearWay. "They are aggressively
marketing to capture a new generation of smokers."