Peruse the online ads on several specialty sites, and you will find that herbal cigarettes are touted as the alternative to regular tobacco. While tobacco filled cigarettes are decried as evil, unhealthy, deadly, and chemically laden, herb cigarettes are frequently portrayed as organic, natural, flavorful, and – at least by implication – healthy. While one herbal cigarette will advertise a tangy cherry flavor, another will showcase itself as a vanilla power punch. There are Dreams herbal cigarettes, Ginseng herbal cigarettes and even the somewhat misleadingly branded herbal Ecstacy cigarettes. Yet upon a review of the Federal Trade Commission as well as a number of other governing bodies have shown that these herbal cigarettes dreams are going up in smoke; the findings showed that herbal cigarettes are just as dangerous and bad for you as their tobacco counterparts.

Generally speaking, herbal cigarettes contain a host of plant materials that may be herbs, weeds, spices, and whatever else the manufacturer may decide they will use. Advertised as tobacco free herbal cigarettes, the manufacturers stop short of using the one plant that is getting into a lot of hot water with the anti smoking crowd, namely tobacco. What most herbal cigarettes have in common is the combination of unusual herbs, and the exotic names and sometimes pleasing smells that emanate from them add to the allure of the herbal cigarettes. While all would have been good and well if the manufacturers had stuck to their normal slogans, marketed kits for homemade herb cigarettes, and simply relied on their newness of the product for their sales, the mistake that netted them the attention of the governing bodies was the slogan that anyone could stop smoking with herbal cigarettes.

Once the spotlight shone onto the herbal cigarettes it was quickly found out that tar, carbon monoxide and even nicotine were inhaled in quantities similar to – in some cases more so than – regular cigarettes. Not to be deterred, the official bodies took also a look at the audience for these products and found that their fruity flavors and low costs made theme extremely marketable to younger audiences, especially elementary and high school students. Similarly, officials warn that even though the ingredients in herbal smokes may sound healthy – ginseng, vanilla, and other herbs have a nice organic ring to them – their healthful properties that are undoubtedly there evaporate the moment these substances are burned and the smoke is inhaled. The change of the solid state into a gaseous state changes the chemical properties and thus while jasmine is a pleasant plant that might make a great tea, burned jasmine introduces tar into the lungs and a host of carcinogens.