Smoke ’em if you got ’em: Ban on clove and flavored cigs is coming

When I was 15, my friend Lindsey and I would sneak out of summer camp to smoke skinny, leaf-wrapped cigarettes called bidis. They came in exotic-looking, triangular packages decorated with pictures of whatever they were supposed to taste like — vanilla beans, strawberries — though they mostly just tasted like burning. We felt satisfyingly rebellious, even though I’m sure we just looked like a pair of dizzy dorks.

Still, I’m disappointed that, back in June, President Barack Obama robbed our nation’s youth of this

method of extinguishing brain cells by signing the Family Smoking Prevention and

Tobacco Control Act, which, among other things, bans flavored cigarettes like cloves and bidis.

Jason Ballou, co-owner of Main Street Tobacco at 4307 Main, has been in the cig-selling business for 14 years. He says the ban will eliminate 50 of his store’s cigarette varieties, and unless he tells them, most of his customers have no idea what’s coming.