fake cigarettes -------- from china
 

apparently many cigarettes being made secretly in china are flooding the global market.

there was a programme on tv last night and it is frightening. these fakes are shipped abroad-- many sold in markets etc, apparently they have very high levels of lead in them.


also hard to identify genuine from fake. be careful if you are a smoker.

Oh no O.O!

Believe it or not. China can copy anything under the sky if there is a market for it. e.g I phone, Toyota car, and even egg. They can even turn a dead rotten chicken into a Kentucky fired chicken. Do a search in the internet you might find some of these products.

Wow, fired chickens in Kentucky? :eek: lol

How much worse can they be than the "legit" cigs?

I mean, here's another good reason to quit, but it isn't like they are fake apples from China full of lead.

Didn't know Chinese cared about other people's health so much. The number of quiting smoking should rise up thanks to them.

haha. I agree.

Cigarettes from China would be just as bad. They're all bad. A little bit of lead isn't going to hurt anyone.

Note to myself - remember to thank Shinjuku for the forum upgrade. The decline of spammers is very noticeable.

My friends at college all smoke and somehow I think,as bad as smoking is,adding lead could still be worse.

well i am no expert but an expert said they contained massive amounts of lead.
he warned that they are like a loudly ticking time bomb.those who smoke them are in real danger healthwise.

not according to the experts. these are far more lethal. i am glad i have never smoked. billions are being made from this black market. people have been warned--so if they continue to smoke then they are digging their own painful grave.

you have to be joking. how foolish are those who prefer to close their minds to real danger. they will still expect to be saved by doctors etc.

the attitude that it "will never happen to me."



BBC - Panorama: Smoking and the Bandits - join in the debate

I know it is a real issue, any product that can damage a person's health is a product that shouldn't really be on the market . . . but - to be honest - I doubt this topic will get much sympathy, or that anyone will care.

I don't say this to be harsh, but simply it seems generally that western society and culture is very much against smokers and smoking. Smokers are pretty much a minority, I read a statistic the other day that 22% of people smoke, which is less than a quarter, and the government only today has announced new measures to tackle it. It's seen as a social problem. Then there's the general mentality of 'if people want to do damage to their bodies anyway then why should I care if they eventually do get damaged, they brought it upon themselves'.

I hadn't actually heard of these 'fake' cigerettes until you mentioned them, and - yes - smokers need to be careful, but if they don't care about cancers and diseases that they inflict upon themselves why would anyone care about the ammount of lead that they could potentially take? The smokers take a risk every day, this is just one more risk.

But cigarettes themselves are a loudly ticking time bomb. It's like saying, "Be careful of the Chinese made grenades. They have extra shrapnel."

Lead will kill you faster than cigs. Your really just talking degrees of death here. Sides, I would imagine these fakes are more problamatic overseas than in the US.

I think the really important thing that people are missing - these are FAKE cigarettes. The electronic types where you put an infuser of some type in them and "smoke". They are not tobacco products, and are not limited by age in many places. They are in Japan - you can`t buy them under 20 - but in a number of other countries they are classified as "novelty" items.

So... On top of being touted as a "safe alternative" to really smoking, they are available to children who are particularly susceptible to the neurological damage from lead and other contaminants.

Information I could have used YESTERDAY!

???

All the posts that I see seem to be talking about these as if they are fakes of normal cigarettes - ie. the type with tobacco in them that you light...
Not the "pretend" plastic types with little plugs of scented something-or-other in them to "simulate" smoking.

The electronic ones are being marketed as a safe alternative to actually smoking - and for the legit ones, it apparently is. They can provide a decreasing dose of nicotine and give the smoker something to do when trying to quit. The legit ones are expensive - so there are fakes of these flooding the market using random chemicals that are more harmful than real cigarettes.

Exactly. I thought the warning was about tobacco cigs.

Okay. The addition of the image made it seem sarcastic, as if I was stating the obvious.

these are not the electronic type at all

for pities sake i give up if people want to kill themselves then these cigs will help them on their way

Really? All the programming and warnings I have seen have been about the electronic type, as they do not have the regulations and testing required for regular cigarettes.
Tobacco is a regulated item, highly taxed and kept very close track of so that governments can get all of the tax benefits. The electronic cigarettes have been in the news a LOT recently due to the issues and lack of regulation.

In the past month, I have seen numerous reports of contaminated e-cigarettes - usually knock-offs imported from China - but none about fake "normal" cigarettes.

BBC iPlayer - Panorama: Smoking and the Bandits


these are being manufactured in china and distributed globally.

I apologize.

The two programs I have seen in the past couple of weeks and the several articles I read were about the e-cigarette problems. I assumed this was also regarding the same issue.

you were not to know nyrororin. i think its a shame that people get hooked on smoking. sadly my son and daughter smoke--both knowing the risks. i am lucky because i have never wanted to smoke thinking about it-- my son has managed to stop-- so that is good news.

when i see people standing out in the cold-- having a smoke--because smoking is not allowed in public places-- i feel sorry for the smoker--------- it seems so hard to give up.

the chinese public has a huge nicotine addiction going on. real cigarettes or ersatz cigarettes, you name them. lo and behold. i convinced my chinese boyfriend to cut his aweful smoking habit by feeding him peppermint candies.

he wanted an electric cigarette from beijing. i said no.

That's good. You're saving the world! I gave my friend a stop smoking leaflet just for a laugh.

I'd consider my self just a social smoker. If I go out to a bar, I'll bum a couple off of a friend just because I'm there and I'm having a good time with beer and it's natural. However, I'm in no way addicted and I never buy packs for myself, and don't ever even think about smoking. This is really just due to how infrequent it happens.

However, it's kind of jarring seeing some of these comments in my opinion. I mean, I don't fear keeling over from Chinese lead cigarettes because I hardly even smoke, but to suggest that others who do smoke habitually deserve it simply because cigarettes can be harmful anyway is pretty screwed up. It's really early now so I could probably come up with a better analogy later, but in my opinion it's basically like saying "You eat fast food, which has many detrimental effects on the body, so you deserve to get e. coli" or something like that. Everything is gonna kill you, but to just say, "well, you deserve it anyway" is quite archaic.

Did someone say smokers deserved to die?

we are warned about many things yet more often than not we think it won't happen to me.


nobody said smokers deserve to die but if they get lung cancer because of it-- who should they blame. passive smoking also kills.

i worry about my own daughter who still cannot give it up. what does it take to make us take notice and realise the risks of smoking.


addiction obviously is the real problem.

If it were only cigarettes...

These are unhealthy anyway.

Unfortuntely it doesn't stop there.

Pharmaceuticals, aircraft parts, car parts, you name it.

Foodstuff too - remember that scandal about the adulterated milk ?

Far more than that... especially if you are Chinese and have exposures to Chinese news... More recent ones I've read are fake eggs, fake water melon, and fake pork...

Yes, fake pork, they use soaked card board and dye to similuate the texture....

A friend of mine, bought a pair of "Nike" in China, the entire thing was made with Paper.. he discovered that while running to the train station from the office while its raining.. it was embarrassing, he walk on to the train with no shoes and a pair of dripping socks....

Judging from the taste, certain burger chains got there first with minced beef..

Life is dangerous, should we stop trying to live it?. I mean really, if someone wants to smoke, that's thier choice just like drinking, doing drugs, jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, scaleing 30,000 foot mountains in winter with one rope. As long as what they do isn't going to interfere with someone else let them do what they want.

That should be the rule about it, if they don't hurt anyone else with thier activities, stop henpecking them.

Not surprising. When my friends went to china someone tried to sell them an iPhone 4 with a triangle home button. I yelled at them for not buying one. Also they didn't buy a Mao watch. I'd love one of those.

That's the problem, isn't it? What they do does hurt other people in many of those examples . . . second-hand smoke can be just as deadly as smoking itself, and drink/drugs lowers one's inhibitions and can make some people rather violent. I think many of the laws/rules involving these things are quite reasonable, and it's also reasonable to try and get people to stop behaviours that are a risk to themselves and others.

Plus jumping out of planes and rock-climbing are 'safe' activities, you do them with the expectation you'll make it out alive. Smoking causes damage regardless of any possible 'precautions', so it's not a risk but an actual threat, hardly comparable to the other examples.