The 'cigar' on the left is the same height as the 'cigarette' on the right and contains approximately the same amount of tobacco. Both have filters.  The paper which surrounds the 'cigar' has tobacco fibre in it, which classifies this tobacco product as a cigar.

When it is a cigarette disguised to slip through an excise tax loophole.

Health Canada regulations for cigars are much more lax than they are for cigarettes.  There is no minimum size for cigar packages (cigarettes must be sold in packages with no fewer than 20 units).  Cigars do not have to have warnings on individual units, nor do they have to have warnings on both sides of multiple unit packages.

The difference between cigars and cigarettes is established by the Excise Tax Act, which deems that cigars are tobacco products wrapped in tobacco leaf.  Or, to be precise:

"cigar" means every description of cigar, cigarillo and cheroot and any roll or tubular construction intended for smoking that consists of a filler composed of pieces of natural or reconstituted leaf tobacco, a binder of natural or reconstituted leaf tobacco in which the filler is wrapped and a wrapper of natural or reconstituted leaf tobacco;

Small tobacco merchants have moved into this legal loop-hole and started selling cigarette-like cigars in Canada. A wide variety of these tobacco products is now available -- usually cheaper than even the discount brand cigarettes (although the federal taxes charged on these products are about the same) .  The individually wrapped cigarillo (left) is sold at many convenience stores and costs about the same as a candy bar.  The packages shown below purchased for $5.00 - about $2 cheaper than the most inexpensive legally produced cigarettes.

Both are available in kiddy-pack sizes, at kiddy-friendly prices and kiddy-friendly flavours. Individual cigarillos are available in - count 'em - nine flavours (chocolate mint, cherry, rum, wild berry, cinnamon...). None of them has the same level of health warning messages as regular cigarettes.

The result is a market with cheaper and friendlier tobacco products. 

The convenience store analysis  "YCM" reported in June 2006 that "Cigars, less than one percent of tobacco sales a few years ago, are approaching five percent."

Unlike cigarettes, these cigarette size-cigars can be sold in single packages	The government requires a lower level of warning for 'little cigars' than it does for cigarettes. On cigarettes warnings must be on the top of both sides, for cigar packages, they must only be on the bottom of one side.	These cigarettes were sold for $5 -- by far the cheapest smoked cigarettes on the market.	No actions are anticipated to restrict companies from flavouring or promising sweetness (i.e. "honey roasted")

Snake oil meets tobacco marketing -
A very unhealthy combination

Just when you thought you had seen it all, along comes a new way to suggest that the harms of smoking can be reduced.

This summer, an independent entrepreneur, Roger Ouellette, began marketing a cigarette with tobacco that had been 'vitaminzied' with Vitamin C.  "We give you all the vitamins you lose, plus some vitamins to help you," he told CTV News earlier this summer, in spite of a federal prohibition against making health claims for tobacco products. 

Could these cigarettes actually be MORE dangerous?  Yes, if, like the inventor's wife, smokers think that by switching to them they "don't have to quit any more."   see:  CTV News Story
 

It is harder and harder for BAT/Imperial Tobacco to market an image for its full-price brands. Without sponsored events (like tennis, jazz festivals, horseback riding and car racing) to create the impression that their cigarettes are the ones for upwardly mobile or aspirational smokers, they need to look for other ways to create a luxe image.

Hence the fancy lighters.  Sold for around $5.00, these are unlikely to be a profit-turner for BAT -- but with their elegant detailing and their resonance with the cigarette brand they represent, they are perhaps one of the cheapest ways for BAT/ITL to advertise.