Three thousand children start smoking in our country every day and one third of them will eventually die from smoking tobacco related diseases.

The Nassau County Legislature, on a bipartisan basis and with both Democratic and Republican co-sponsors, recently passed legislation that bans the sale of herbal cigarettes to minors in Nassau County. This is an important piece of legislation because minors can currently buy these cigarettes even though they have many of the dangerous health effects of tobacco cigarettes.

Furthermore, because of the designation as "herbal," these cigarettes are marketed and/or perceived as a "healthier alternative" to tobacco smoking. As a result, they are, in a sense, even more dangerous than tobacco cigarettes because their deleterious health consequences aside, they become, in effect, "training wheels" for deadly tobacco addiction.

When I called cigar and cigarette stores to find out if they carried the product their answer was "these are not like herbal teas ... they are a cigarette product." The truth of the matter is that the fact that a product is natural does not, by itself, equate with that product being healthy. Herbal cigarettes, marketed as natural, contain many of the same chemicals found in tobacco cigarettes. In fact, smokers of herbal cigarettes are burning and drawing into their lungs (with a deeper and stronger inhale due to leaf wrappings which are less permeable to air) the same substances that cause lung cancer and emphysema in tobacco cigarettes. The idea of "healthy" cigarettes is deceptive, misleading and dangerous.

The deceptive marketing of these herbal cigarettes will attract children. Sometimes packaged with colorful wrappings and with cartoon characters, children can and will equate these herbal cigarettes with candy. In fact, one of the packages depicts a leprechaun, almost identical to the one on the Lucky Charms cereal boxes. Another product is called "Ecstasy" packaged with butterflies on the box. The cigarette, itself, looks identical to regular cigarettes.

This legislation increases the maximum fine for sale to minors of both herbal and regular cigarettes to $1,250. It also increased the maximum fine for violation of the County law regarding smoking in public places to $1,250.

By including herbal cigarettes in our Smoking Law, we are saying "no" to the direct sale of sickness and disease to our children.