Why Candy Cigarettes Are Banned In Several Countries

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Most kids dream of the day when they're grown up and independent, and from the 1960s through to the '90s — and even later — kids, throughout their childhood, would play games where they imitated their parents, or a grown-up they admired like a singer or a movie star. And that often included play-puffing on a candy cigarette. These sickly sweet candy sticks — sometimes made from bubblegum — were packaged almost exactly like the real deal, with a red-tipped end that resembled a flame. Some even came with powdered sugar to emulate smoke puffs. 

Pantomiming smoking with candy cigs made kids feel "cool" and grown up. This ended up being the slow and embattled demise of the candy cigarette in many countries, as the truth of the innocent-appearing little candies, which fall on our list of 14 foods from the '80s you probably forgot about, emerged as being an underhanded and very intentional marketing approach by the tobacco industry, working hand-in-hand with candymakers, to start priming young children to become the next generations of smokers and tobacco addicts.

The first candy cigarettes started out as chocolate smokes in the 1880s, sold right next to real cigarettes — but perhaps that was just to launch the idea of the sweetie version. By the 1920s, they had become so popular, especially with kids, that candy developers started packaging them in branded boxes just like their real tobacco peers, complete with plastic wrap, the same box design — sometimes with only a letter or two changed in the name — and with the branding elements so similar it was hard to tell them apart.

With a few letters scrambled and a box looking almost identical to the original, a quick glance wouldn't discern Viceroy from Viceyo, or Marlboro from Marboro. You'd think this would be a problem for the tobacco brands, but instead, by 1939, cigarette makers started giving authorization to the candy industry to use their pack designs. A 2000 study published in BMJ cited one confectioner as saying "... [w]e put out the candy cigaret packs by the millions," promoting "the tremendous advertising factor" to "coming up cigaret smokers."

This same study revealed that the recommended retail price for candy cigarettes was lower than that of other candies, and that they were often placed on the lower shelves in stores — right in the line of vision for 4 to 8-year-olds. Up to this point, people didn't know the actual dangers of tobacco products and smoking, so one could argue that all these tactics were merely a smart marketing strategy to entice kids to buy candy. 

But in 1964, a report by surgeon general Luther Terry blew open the serious impact that smoking can have on health, and how it could cause lung cancer and even death. This report led to the tobacco industry being required to put warning labels on tobacco products, and there were bans placed on the advertisement of tobacco products. Down the line, there was growing concern over candy cigarettes and how they were subtly "grooming" children to become adult smokers and desensitizing them to the harmful effects of cigarettes.

En masse, U.S. cigarette makers denied giving permission to candy makers to use their packaging and branding. Watery lawsuits were raised against the candy companies, but were either settled out of court or weren't pushed beyond the first filing. Candy makers did start replacing the term "candy cigarettes" with "candy sticks" in an effort to keep the product on the market, but countries across the world had already started banning the controversial sweets, including Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Kuwait, Norway, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. 

But only one U.S. state banned candy cigarettes — and it was unsuccessful. North Dakota banned the candies in 1953, only to have the ban repealed in 1967. From 1970 to 1990, 11 U.S. states attempted to ban the controversial candies, all without success, because the approach to lobbying against the bans was so effective. But some things fizzle out of their own accord, and, while many popular candies stood the test of time, the notorious allure of candy cigarettes dwindled as the years went on. 

Nowadays, you can only get ahold of them online (Amazon sells many iterations, including an 8-pack) or at specialty candy stores, and they are used more for props at '80s and '90s-themed parties than anything else. They don't even fall on our list of the 12 best retro candies you can find at Cracker Barrel. Observing the rise and dominance of candy-flavored e-cigarettes and vapes, and studies already showing that e-cigarettes are most prominently used by teenagers, we ponder: Are these a replacement for candy cigarettes? Has the tobacco industry integrated lessons from the veiled partnership with the candy industry, and created a new vein in the kiddie-to-adult-smoking pipeline?