"There's been good research which demonstrates that young people are introduced to smoking often by menthol cigarettes as they find them more attractive, they find them less irritative and they find them more palatable, so that's a way they get introduced to regular smoking. "I smoke menthol occasionally as I say and it's...for me, if I smoke menthol I smoke fewer cigarettes simply because it leaves a taste in your mouth and that for me is not conducive with a meal, or a coffee, or a coke or whatever, whereas a normal cigarette is. Angie Brown is Chair of the anti-smoking lobby group Action on Smoking and Health (Ireland), or ASH. "There's also evidence there that if you smoke menthol cigarettes it's actually harder to quit so potentially they're more addictive and there is pharmacological evidence of that because it seems that," she says. And of course they have all the carcinogens in that non-menthol cigarettes have so they still cause cardiovascular disease, lung cancer and emphysema so they're certainly not safer than non-menthol cigarettes.