Medicinal cigarettes
Smoking less but better
Tobacco companies in China are ‘luring’ customers with cigarettes ‘laced’ with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), according to a story in The Global Times.
In a post that ‘went viral’ on Tuesday, a Sina Weibo [China’s biggest social media network] user was said to have called attention to a trend for Chinese tobacco manufacturers to use TCM as a marketing tool.
Photos by ‘ZhuiFengShao JianLiuQuan’ show cigarettes labeled as having added tangerine peel and loquat, which are used in TCM for digestive problems.
Another contains Chinese caterpillar fungus, which is famous in Chinese medicine as, among other things, an expensive aphrodisiac.
The Times said that China Tobacco Sichuan was one of the companies selling the products, ‘according to reports’.
The ‘herbs’ were found in small ‘liquid-gel beads’ in the filters, as was the case in respect of China’s more common fruit-flavored cigarettes.
Quoting ‘media’ sources, the Times said that anti-smoking groups in China had railed against claims that TCM-laced cigarettes were in some way healthy since the early 2000s, but the use of TCMs in cigarettes goes back a lot longer than that.
Netizens had their fun of course. “I caught a cold, I hope this can cure my cough,” wrote Judy_Kim.
