Does anyone know the active constituents of clove cigarettes and their pharmacological effects? I’ve been putzing around on google looking for an answer, but not to much avail. Eugenol was mentioned in several places, but without a satisfactory description of its effects on humans when smoked. I’ve smoked pure clove cigarettes before and noticed a definite buzz–nothing nearly as strong as even just the hand-rolled tobacco I smoke on occassion, but noticable enough to make me doubtful of those who tell me it’s just carbon monoxide.
Hm… Thanks for the sites, but it looks like these are more about general health effects and not really pharmacology. Also, they talk about mixed clove/tobacco cigarettes, anyway, while I’m mostly interested in just the effects unique to cloves. The ones I said I noticed a buzz from were PURE cloves–no tobacco content whatsoever, I’m positive. And I haven’t really ever trusted Go Ask Alice, as I’ve found on the site, which is obviously geared at discouraging drug use in teens, quite a number of blatantly misinforming and misleading articles. I have similar suspicions of this Dr. Greene as well.
Anyone with anything at all to go on? A drug name, maybe?
Eugenol specifically is a phenol and a topical anaesthetic; it numbs the throat so smoke is less irritating and can cause you to be more susceptible to lung infections, etc. It doesn’t seem that it causes a “high” in and of itself, but the anaesthetising effects can cause smokers to inhale more deeply since the smoke doesn’t feel as harsh. The deeper inhalation may be responsible for the increased high you experienced.
As far as other reasons for an increased high, it might help to know which type of clove cigarette you’re specifically wanting to know about. It seems most clove cigarettes contain more than just cloves - there are some which do not have tobacco in them, but do have other herbs and flavours. A little more background info on the brand name would probably help. 
Here is a link to the Harvard Medical School’s Consumer Health Information website.
I have heard that clove oil is addictive but see no indication of this at the website. Caution is still advised due to the large number of negative health side-effects it may have.
Don’t ask Alice, ask Cecil
Let me also put up a warning on Cloves. I used to smoke them years ago (late 80’s) and had so many problems with my lungs I’m lucky I didn’t die -and that my lungs still work.
Clove cigarettes really are nasty things.
They were damn tasty though.