Collection: Candy Cigarettes

Candy cigarettes, marketed primarily to children, have been on the market for almost as long as actual cigarettes. Candy cigarettes come in a variety of forms, ranging from bubblegum to chalky sugar to chocolate. The candy is shaped and packaged to resemble popular brands of cigarettes. Often, the names of these popular brands are adjusted slightly to avoid copyright or trademark violations. For example, Pall Mall becomes “Pell Mell,” Camel becomes “Cemal,”and Lucky Strike becomes “Bucky Strike.” Many candy cigarette advertisements work to convince kids that they can be just as grown up as their role models, with chocolate cigarettes, for example, which “look just like Dad’s!” Although these products clearly desensitize children to smoking by normalizing cigarette usage amongst younger generations, efforts to outlaw candy cigarettes in the United States (both in 1970 and again in 1991) have been unsuccessful. Other countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Finland, have been proactive in banning candy cigarettes.