Massachusetts has slashed youth cigarette smoking by more than half in the last two decades, aided significantly by higher taxes that rose to $2.51 a pack in 2008. But an underworld of tobacco products, not subject to the same level of state and federal taxation, has emerged into broad daylight: Strawberry, vanilla, and wine-flavored cigars; mango and chocolate blunt wraps; watermelon, grape, and peach snuff pouches; and dissolvable coffee- and wintergreen-flavored orbs that look like Tic Tac breath mints. Since 2003, use of these “other tobacco products,” or OTPs, by Massachusetts kids has risen from 13.3 percent to 17.6 percent of high schoolers, surpassing the 16 percent of teens who smoke cigarettes.
