Chocolate Cigarettes Soon to be Outlawed?

This is actually one chocolate product I never knew existed: chocolate cigarettes. I remember the bubble gum cigarettes from when I was a kid — they were thin white sticks sold in packs made to resemble cigarettes, and blowing on one end produced a puff of sugar “smoke” from the other end. You’d pretend to “smoke” it for a minute before the lure of bubble gum took over and it was devoured.

Now that flavored cigarettes (as in real cigarettes) have been recently banned, the idea that the nostalgic candies even resemble the now-banned items have some fans of the candy versions wondering if they might be next anyway, even though they obviously don’t cause cancer or otherwise threaten your health like real cigarettes do.

Though I haven’t seen candy cigarettes in stores since I was a kid and wouldn’t buy them for my own kids if I did, I think it’s a slippery slope when we begin pulling things from store shelves simply because of what they resemble.

“Smoking” the bubble gum cigarettes as a kid didn’t convince me to become a smoker as an adult, and I believe this is largely due to the example from the adults in my life who were not smokers, and who taught us early on that it wasn’t a good habit to pick up in the first place. (Even the extended family members that did smoke encouraged us not to.) I think teaching kids about the risks of smoking has more of an influence on their future choices than a pack of candy ever will.

What do you think?

[image: candy warehouse]