Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 14, 1992 TAG: 9201140343
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CANDY SMOKES
IT IS TOO easy to ridicule recent university-sponsored research on candy and bubble-gum cigarettes, too easy to dismiss the findings. The implications of the studies conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are not so easily shaken off.The research implicates candy cigarettes as training toys for future smokers. Young children who buy candy or bubble-gum cigarettes are twice as likely to try the real thing later in life, one study found.
Many adults, who remember chewing the cigar-sized gum or eating the yecky-sweet candy cigarettes when they were kids, may be surprised they are still around. After decades of mounting evidence on the health hazards of real cigarettes and society's growing intolerance of smoking, it's unseemly, to say the least, that manufacturers are still making the pretend-smokes.
"Parents and public-health professionals would not sanction toy marijuana joints or crack cocaine. Similarly, toy cigarettes should not be allowed to enter into children's play," the study says. Adds Dr. Jonathan Klein, an assistant professor of pediatrics at UNC-Chapel Hill: "It's distressing when we say that we don't want children to smoke, yet there are all these sort of inappropriate messages out there that make it more likely that they will."
Agreed. But it's hard to believe that candy cigarettes are going to be a primary cause of anybody getting hooked on the habit. The bigger danger of candy and bubble-gum pretenders may be dental cavities.
Which isn't to say kiddy smokes are harmless. The UNC study suggests otherwise. It is just to say that the example of peers and role-model adults still has more bearing on decisions by young people to take up smoking.
And there are the usual problems with government responses. If candy cigarettes are to be officially banned, what about de-alcoholized beers and wines that look, smell and taste like the real thing? How about toy machine guns and rubber knives? Imagine the violence they train for.
There are any number of items on the market that send bad messages to kids. Bans are rarely feasible. Of course, manufacturers could on their own show restraint. In the meantime, though, it's left to parents and guardians to decide if products are bad, to counter the message, and to keep them out of children's hands. The best discouragement against kids' smoking is for adults to refrain.