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Up In Smoke: Students Prefer "Blacks" Over Cigarettes

By Tiffani Turner
Black College Wire

When someone has had a trying day, he or she might go for a smoke. But some have turned in their cigarettes for another kind of smoke, one called "Black & Milds."

Black & Milds are a smaller version of a cigar, but cheaper. Better known as "Blacks" and becoming widely accepted by everyday college students, they can be bought for as little as 65 cents each.

Yet there is another cost. The box reads, "Surgeon General Warning: Cigars are not a safe alternative to smoking cigarettes."

"If cigarettes and cigars had a baby, it would be a Black & Mild," said Brandon Roberto Carter, a junior advanced marketing major at Howard University. "What I mean by that is it is the best of both worlds; it's a hybrid, so to speak."

The product is 100 percent tobacco, and there is a certain skill to smoking it.

"You don't inhale cigars,'' Carter said. "But you better believe you inhale Black & Milds the way that you would a square (cigarette)."

William Wilson, a Howard sophomore psychology major, says he smokes "Blacks" because "Black & Milds are something you smoke to relieve stress; they make you feel good, they relax you, and they smell better than cigarettes."

Wilson also noted several other reasons: "In L.A. they are 75 cents. There are about five in a pack and they cost somewhere around two dollars. I don't really buy packs, I buy one or two. Black & Milds are bigger than cigarettes and are like mini-cigars"

Others say they appreciate the lower cost and an aroma they consider sweeter and more comforting.

But none of that impresses Caroline Dennis, a junior music education major at Howard. "Deciding or choosing to smoke is like signing your own death certificate and purchasing your own coffin,'' she said. "Smoking is dangerous to the person inhaling the toxins and the people that they are around. I am not the type of person who would like to endanger others or myself. I'm clean."

Tiffani Turner is a student at Howard University who writes for The Hilltop.