By Michele Harris
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Penny candy – peanut chews, Atomic Fire Balls, Necco Wafers, and root-beer barrels – for many, these confections call to mind days gone by, when a nickel in your pocket could buy a bag full of treats. As we all know, times change – what once cost a nickel, may cost as much as 50 cents at the candy store today. What’s more, what was considered harmless 40 years ago, we now realize, might ultimately cause harm. 

Pretending affects reality
One of those dime store staples, candy cigarettes, is the focus of a new study published in the July 2007 issue of Preventative Medicine. The research focuses on adult smokers – 22% of current and former smokers say they consumed candy cigarettes in their youth while only 14% of non-smokers consumed candy cigarettes as children. This finding is significant because it draws a statistical link between pretend smoking in childhood and actual smoking as an adult. Past studies of young people indicate that consuming candy cigarettes desensitizes children to the harm of smoking real cigarettes.

Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Rochester, Dr. Jonathan Klein is one of the researchers and authors of the study. “Candy and gum look-alike products allow children to respond to tobacco marketing and advertising long before they are old enough to smoke a cigarette,” says Klein. “The continued existence of these products helps promote smoking as a culturally or socially acceptable activity.”

Countries such as, the UK, Australia and Canada have banned the sale of candy cigarettes. In the United States, there is no such ban, but major retailers such as Wal-Mart have taken the matter into their own hands and refuse to sell the products. 

The American Lung Association estimates that at least 4.5 million U.S. adolescents are cigarette smokers. They say that each day, nearly 6,000 children under 18 years of age start smoking; of these, nearly 2,000 will become regular smokers. That is almost 800,000 annually.