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TrendBlendz: how Splitarillos use marijuana flavours to promote cigarillo use
  1. Ganna Kostygina1,
  2. Jidong Huang2,
  3. Sherry Emery1
  1. 1Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  2. 2Health Policy Center, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Ganna Kostygina, Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1747 West Roosevelt Road, Suite 592, Chicago, IL 60608, USA; kostygin{at}uic.edu

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Trendsettah, Inc. is a cigar and cigarillo-producing company whose brands include Splitarillos cigarillos, Hood Wraps cigars, Blow vaporisers, Vsmoke e-liquids, as well as other brands.1 Trendsettah connects with its consumers through live entertainment, social media and experiential promotion, and is highly active on such social media sites as Twitter and Instagram.1 In addition it uses ‘most popular personalities in entertainment, sports, fashion and style,’ such as rappers Jadakiss, Boosie, and Chris Brown as spokespeople for its tobacco products.1 As part of the ‘experiential promotion’ the company employs a ‘fleet’ of promotional vans that distribute giveaways and advertise tobacco products in urban areas (figure 1).

Figure 1

Splitarillos USA Instagram photos. Top row: Use of promotional vehicals to distribute giveaways and market Splitarillos in urban neighborhoods (left); Promotion of Loud, PurpleK, 18K Splitarillos flavour (right). Source: https://instagram.com/splitarillos_usa/ Bottom row: Promotion of Cali Green and Pineapple Express Splitarillos at the 2014 High Times Cannabis Cup (left) and the 2014 Chalice California (right). Source: …

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Footnotes

  • Funding Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Award Number U01CA154254. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH or the NCI.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.