Guilty Pleasure: Using Flavored Tobacco Products in Massachusetts

What's your guilty pleasure? Ice cream? A glass of wine before lunch? My guilty pleasure is using flavored tobacco products among the deprived locals of Massachusetts.

Get our free mobile app

Here's a public service announcement for Connecticut tobacco users: Stock up on flavored products before you go to Massachusetts, if you didn't know, they have been banned up there in the Commonwealth for just over 4 years. Menthol cigarettes? Nope. Apple, Wintergreen, or Mint smokeless tobacco? No. As of June 1, 2020, the sale of ALL flavored tobacco in Massachusetts is banned, the first flavored tobacco ban in all of the United States. I feel awful for menthol cigarette smokers in Worcester and Boston, although the black market is strong, the ride to New Hampshire, Rhode Island, or Connecticut for a pack of Newport must have gotten old quick.

Since 2020, a handful of states like Oregon, Vermont, Maryland, and Indiana have joined in and enacted restrictions on flavored tobacco. According to csnews.com, the ban in Massachusetts has failed to make an impact on the number of adult, menthol cigarette smokers. The flavored tobacco ban in Massachusetts has also led to an increase in smuggling, and now you know why menthol smokes are hard to find in our border towns of Enfield, Canaan, and the Northeast corner of CT/RI/Mass.

My wife is from just outside of Springfield, Mass, and we visit her family a few times each month. I can't tell you how many times during 2020 and 2021 I made a dunce out of myself by asking gas station attendants for a can of Skoal Apple. I've learned my lesson in 2025.