Are cigarettes vegan? Why vegan smokers should take a closer look

It is well known that smoking is not healthy. But is smoking actually vegan? In this article, we clarify and introduce vegan cigarette brands.

The question of whether smoking is vegan cannot be answered so easily and in general. That depends on two factors:

1. Ingredients: Cigarettes not only consist of tobacco, but often also contain additional ingredients. Depending on the manufacturer, these may be of animal origin.

2. Animal testing: Many manufacturers use animal testing to study the health effects of cigarette smoke.

These ingredients are not vegan

Many cigarettes contain additional ingredients such as menthol, liquorice, ammonium chloride, shellac or hemoglobin. Two of these ingredients are not vegan:

• The ingredient shellac is made from gum lacquer. It is used as an adhesive in cigarette manufacture. Shellac is obtained from the excretions of the lacquer scale insect – that is also the reason why it is not vegan.
• Another non-vegan ingredient that manufacturers sometimes use in cigarette filters is hemoglobin. The blood pigment hemoglobin comes from the red blood cells of vertebrates. As a rule, pig’s blood serves as the basis for this.

Cigarettes and animal testing – what does that mean in concrete terms?

As previously mentioned, many cigarette manufacturers conduct animal testing. Unfortunately, these are not uncommon. The manufacturers induce them primarily to research the effects of smoking on the organism. Researchers usually transfer these observations and research results to humans, even if this is not possible without restrictions and is only an approximation.

The experiments are carried out on different animal species, such as monkeys, dogs, rats or mice. Basically, the researchers look at how smoking affects the organism of the animals. The animals are usually forced to inhale the cigarette smoke for several hours at a time every day. This often happens over a period of weeks, months or even years. Of course, the animals don’t want this, but they are locked in, for example, or put on masks and are thus exposed to the smoke. Cigarette tar is sometimes applied to the skin of the animals to investigate the formation of skin tumors.

The animals usually die at some point as a result of forced consumption. The researchers then dissect and examine the animals. They want to get information about what can be done to give people a “healthier” smoking experience.

These cigarette brands are vegan

So smoking is not generally vegan. However, there are a few brands that at least claim to be animal-free and animal-free:

• Lorillard Tobacco: Newport, Maverick, Old Gold, Kent, True, Satin, May

• Pöschl Tabak: Pueblo, Red Bull

• Von-Eicken: Allure, Burton, Denim, Dimitrinos, Dockers, Manitou Organic, Pepe, St.Pauli

A case that is not entirely clear is Imperial Brands, which includes the following cigarette brands: Davidoff, Drum, Gauloises, Gauloises Blondes, Gitanes, Golden Virginia, JPS, Rizla and West. Imperial Brands states that it does not conduct or commission any animal testing itself. However, the manufacturer admits that it would change this if the responsible authorities or governments required it. It is therefore possible that Imperial Brands cigarettes are vegan – but how this works in practice remains unclear.

Utopia says: In principle, we advise against smoking from a health and ecological point of view. You can find out how withdrawal can work here: Smoking: recognizing and combating withdrawal symptoms. However, if you cannot or do not want to become a non-smoker, we recommend at least vegan cigarettes without animal ingredients and animal testing.

Read more on Techzle.com:

• Utopia Podcast: Why is there animal testing and how do you avoid it?
• Herbal cigarette: Why you should avoid the tobacco substitute
• How to recognize cosmetics without animal testing