Was reading along in another thread “ask a cop” and someone mentioned smoking cloves…perhaps it was a jest? If it wasn’t, how does one go about that? Don’t think I’ll try it, just curious.
Clove cigarettes are very common. They look like brown cigarettes, and they take longer to smoke than a regular cigarette more like those little cigars. They taste and smell sweeter, so I guess some people might mistake the smell for pot.
There are different brands, but we always used to smoke 'Jarms (I’m sure I’m spelling this wrong - brand name D’Jarums?) Someone will be along to correct me…
Are they just straight cloves? ARe they ground up or whole? I’ve never seen them here (Ontario, Canada).
Do a google search on “clove cigarettes”. What Velma said plus for people who don’t smoke regularly, you get a pretty good, yet short lived, buzz.
I think they reek myself.
The brand name for the cigs that Velma mentioned is Djarum (or perhaps Dijarum, but I don’t think so). To my knowledge, the (ground) cloves are mixed with tobacco.
I smoked cloves for a while. They’re usually a 70/30 mixture of tobacco and ground cloves. The cloves provide a distinctive scent/taste along with eugenol, a chemical that acts as a local anaesthetic to a certain degree, making the smoke seem less harsh. Possible detrimental health effects of inhaling eugenol have not been determined, so it’s possible that there’s significant added danger to smoking clove cigarettes over normal smokes. Some cloves (Djarum Splash) appear to be made with nicotiana rustica, a different variety of tobacco that’s significantly more psychoactive (“gives you more of a buzz”) than ordinary tobacco. There’s no way to tell this from the package, though - I’ve only been able to tell from previous experience smoking nicotiana rustica.
They were very trendy in the 80’s. Stinky, sticky little things. Supposedly way worst for you than regular ciggies.
Haj
Clove cigarettes are a combination of tobacco, ground clove, a few other spices, and fruit sauce, mixed and dried by hand.
They’re the cigarettes which burn with a popping sound.
Yes, there is some tobacco in them, but not as much as a regular cigarette. They smell and taste nice, and give you something to do with your hands - I smoked them occaisionally in college. . It’s a very college thing to do.
They’re by no means harmless (I’ve actually read they’re in some ways more harmful, as they relax your throat for the smoke?), but I’ve met very few clove smokers who smoke them on a regular basis.
They don’t taste very good, but they smell great.
Thank Indonesia for clove cigarettes, or kretek. The smell of *kretek * is one of the things that lets me know I’ve arrived in Indonesia - along with shrimp paste and the soft undercurrent of open sewers. *Kretek * are so popular in Indonesia that the clove monopoly held by one of the younger Soehartos was one of the most resented abuses of that era. I have never been a smoker, but came closest to developing a habit when I first moved to Indonesia, savouring the sweet flavour of a Gudang Garam or Djarum Extra Mild while that harsh addictive smoke filled up the old airbags.
I used to smoke them in college before I moved on to regular cigs. They taste pretty good to me, and I liked the numbtinglies that would spread over my tounge and lips. Top it off they smell nice.
If you want to try them, I advise no inhaling. A good friend of mine ended up coughing up blood after doing that for a month or so. Mind you, he was smoking them pretty steadily. Just roll the smoke around in your mouth and then let it go*.
*In no way is this an endorsement of smoking. It is bad for you.
There are other brands of clove cigarettes available; when I smoked, I smoked the Nat Sherman “A Touch of Clove.”
They’re exceedingly popular in goth clubs (well, not in NYC anymore) – in fact, it often looks as if the goth uniform is clove cigarette in one hand, glass of merlot in the other, and tattered lacy sleeves, with pinhole cigarette burns and wine stains from the lace dragging across someone else’s glass of merlot.
My SO loves clove cigarettes and I like them quite a bit myself. I love the taste it leaves on my lips and they smell wonderful. I haven’t smoked one in quite a while, but my SO just mentioned possibly buying some just the other day. I don’t know if I would smoke them as often as regular cigarettes because they’re quite potent, at least I think so anyway.
My first girlfriend smoked cloves. Her kisses tasted quite pleasant as a result (not always the case with smokers of 100% tobacco cigarettes).
Cloves seem to be favored by artists and artsy-types (that GF was, in fact, an artist). I didn’t think anybody smoked them anymore, since they were more of an 80s phenomenon (like hajario said)… but last semester when I walked by the lobby of my university’s Fine Arts Building, I noticed the distinctive scent of clove cigarettes wafting in the air.
Its stereotype as an artsy cigarette thus appears to survive.