Thaindian News

By Gina Gomez
Apr 20, (THAINDIAN NEWS) A recent research study reveals that children as young as 6 years of age are undergoing a slow death whenever they are consuming flavored tobacco products. The kids are often lured to the colorful tobacco products available in the markets. The consumption of such products though is causing harm to their health when they cause poisoning in their system.

The study released in a journal on Pediatrics claims that at least as many as 1800 young children had been affected by these flavored tobacco candies. Cathryn Cushing, the spokesperson for the Oregon Tobacco Prevention & Education Program said that tobacco companies the world over were trying to make up for their loss due the sudden drop in the sales of cigarettes as a direct product of raw tobacco. Most countries had criminalized the act of smoking, so tobacco companies were now looking towards alternative methods of running their business.

However R.J. Reynolds, the spokesman for the Tobacco Company has a very different story to tell. He says that tobacco candies are a safer alternative for those people who love tobacco and yet cannot smoke keeping in mind health-related reasons. Thus in the manufacturing of these products, the tobacco companies were not violating any legal norm. In fact he says that the tobacco candies have many advantages in the sense that they are smokeless and can be swallowed, thus not leaving behind any dirt.

People involved in the research work are hardly convinced. They feel that even if grown-ups will face no health hazard, it is the small children who will fall prey to the poison of tobacco mints.