Are clove cigarettes 10 times worse than the regular kind?
Dear Cecil: I have heard many times that smoking commercially available filtered clove cigarettes is “ten times worse for your lungs than normal cigarettes.” I suspect this is just an urban legend, but if it is true maybe I should quit smoking cloves. Are cloves worse than other cigarettes? — Summers Henderson Cecil replies: The “ten times worse” figure is probably an exaggeration, but this is no urban legend. At least two teenagers died after smoking clove cigarettes during the clove craze of the mid-1980s. Five others were hospitalized and and 250 others reported breathing difficulties, including coughing up blood. Called “kreteks,” clove cigarettes are imported from Indonesia and were first brought to California by Australian surfers. Typically they’re a 40-60 mix of shredded clove buds and tobacco. Sales rose from 15 million in 1980 to 150 million in 1984 but plummeted thereafter following reports about health problems, including a warning from the American Lung Association. Clove
