Clove Cigarettes

Many people are not aware of this but clove cigarettes are known as “Kreteks”. Clove cigarettes or kreteks contain about 60-70% of tobacco and about 30-40% of shredded cloves combined with a flavoring sauce. Clove cigarettes are named ‘Kretek’ because of the cracking sound that the burning cloves make.

Origin of Clove Cigarettes

Kretek was invented in Java in the 1880’s for treating the lungs or more precisely to cure asthma. As it found to cure chest pains the inventor transported the discovery down to his village. Unfortunately the clove cigarettes could not be marketed out for the mass. Later kreteks were commercialized and sold as a new form of cigarettes. Indonesia seems to employ about 1, 80,000 people directly and about 10 million people indirectly for manufacturing clove cigarettes.

Health Effects of Clove Cigarettes

Clove cigarettes as it is more popularly known are considered to be more dangerous than regular cigarettes. The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirm that clove cigarettes contain double the amount of tar, carbon dioxide and nicotine gases as regular American cigarettes.

Some dangerous effects of clove cigarettes are listed here below:

Adverse Symptoms of Smoking Clove Cigarettes
Some dangerous symptoms of smoking clove cigarettes include the following:

Clove cigarettes is a kind of alternative smoking. Some other common forms of alternative smoking include bidi smoking, herbal or vegetable smoking. Studies show that clove cigarettes are more often consumed by people aged below 30 years. They often smoke alternative cigarettes because they think it is cool, safe and different from regular cigarettes.

It is definite that clove cigarettes are different than regular cigarettes but to the extent that they can be more harmful than regular cigarettes.

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