Bidis Prove To Be A Serious Health Threat

By Wendy Koch

They arrive from India in all-American, candy-like flavors: chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. The skinny cigarettes, called bidis, are luring thousands of the nation's urban youth and worrying public health authorities. Bidis (pronounced beedies), with their arresting aromas and frequently lower prices, have become the latest smoking fad among teens and young adults, first in San Diego and Los Angeles and now Atlanta, Boston and other major cities.

They look strikingly like marijuana joints, but it's legal for adults -- and even minors in some states -- to smoke them. And since many are unfiltered, they're every bit, if not more hazardous to health than regular cigarettes.

New research shows that smoke from bidis has about three times as much nicotine and carbon monoxide and five times as much tar as smoke from regular filtered cigarettes, according to a yet-to-be-released study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

"People need to be aware of the health risks," says Samira Asma, an epidemiologist at the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This is something really harmful. It's addictive."

Bidis have been around for decades, but new varieties are boosting their popularity, making them similar to the sweet wine coolers that attracted a youthful following.

No one knows how many young people nationwide are using bidis, but importers see a boom in demand. Fifty-eight percent of high school students in San Francisco have tried them and 31% smoke them at least once a month, according to a survey last year by the city's Booker T. Washington Community Service Center.

In the past six months alone, the number of bidi requests from retailers has increased 500%, says Shawn Ulizio, director of sales and marketing at California-based importer Kretek International.

Alarm bells

The bidi fad comes as American tobacco companies are facing new restrictions on how they market cigarettes, especially to youth.

Tobacco billboards have been forced from the nation's highways, and teen smoking rates have started to dip, although they remain stubbornly high. One-third of high school seniors still smoke at least once a month.

Bidis alarm health authorities, who view them as cigarettes with training wheels -- products that could hook kids to a lifetime of nicotine addiction.

They worry that some bidis are too easy to buy and lack the health-warning labels required of cigarettes, which they are legally considered.

Seven of 10 packs purchased last year contained no warning labels, according to the San Francisco survey, which tracked 109 retail outlets. The survey also found that one-fourth of the stores illegally sold them to minors, a higher share than did so with regular cigarettes.

And 41% of the bidis bought did not contain tax-paid stamps, explaining why they cost less than regular cigarettes in some urban markets.

Also troubling, health authorities say, is that bidis are being advertised on the Internet. Major importers say they are using the Net to sell to retailers, not individuals.

In April, Arizona specifically banned bidi sales to minors. Although all states already prohibit tobacco sales to minors, Arizona wanted to ensure bidis were covered. Twenty-eight states also bar minors from possessing, let alone smoking, tobacco products. But the laws are unevenly enforced.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has asked government agencies to ensure that bidis have warning labels and are not sold to kids. At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, leading bidi importers have submitted plans that promise to post labels.

Less tobacco, more tar and nicotine

Some teens don't realize bidis are bad for them.

The Massachusetts study, underscoring prior research in India, shows just how bad. It compares four brands of bidis, one with a small cotton filter, to typical filter-tip cigarettes and finds their smoke contains much higher levels of nicotine, tar and carbon monoxide.

Bidis contain less tobacco than regular cigarettes, but the type of unprocessed tobacco is richer in nicotine. Just as important, bidis don't burn as easily because they're wrapped in a nonporous brownish leaf. So smokers have to inhale harder and more often to keep them lit. An average of 28 puffs was needed to complete the study's testing of bidis, compared to nine puffs for cigarettes.

Asma, the CDC scientist, says there are "misconceptions" about bidis, because they look herbal and have even turned up in some health stores. But she warns that studies in India show they pose greater risks for throat, mouth and lung cancer than do regular cigarettes.

Old is new again

For centuries, bidis have been popular in India, where they are known as the "poor man's cigarette" and can be bought for less than five cents a pack. Even upper-class people smoked them until American cigarettes became the rage; now they are the choice mostly of low-income and rural Indians.

They are hand-rolled mostly by poor women. A 1996 report by Human Rights Watch found that children were working at least 10 hours a day, six days a week, to make them for the domestic Indian market. But the group found no evidence that child labor was involved in the production of bidis exported to the United States.

Among the leading importers are Kretek International, Colorado-based Quintin USA Inc. and California-based Smokers Choice.

Kretek is selling about 300,000 cartons of bidis each year, 10 times as many as three years ago but still a small fraction of the company's total tobacco sales, according to Ulizio.

Many retailers say they didn't even offer bidis until a year or so ago, when demand intensified.

Still, bidis remain a tiny part of the overall cigarette market, although it's difficult to gauge their exact share because they are counted under different tariff codes.