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When is a cigar not 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
cigarillos shown here are 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.
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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.
Individual cigarillos are sold in
containers that have no health warnings.
This packaging helps suggest that
cigarillos are no more harmful than the
lipgloss or markers they resemble.
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Unlike cigarettes, the cigarette
size-cigarillos shown above can be sold
in single packages.
They are sold without health warnings
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