A clove cigarette is a tobacco product that blends shredded tobacco with ground cloves, typically in a ratio of roughly 60-80% tobacco to 20-40% cloves. Known as “kretek” in Indonesia, where they originate, these cigarettes get their nickname from the crackling sound the cloves make as they burn.1PubMed Central. Uncovering cloves: characterization of volatile compounds present in clove cigarettes Despite a sweet, spicy aroma that sets them apart from conventional cigarettes, kreteks deliver equal or greater amounts of nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide per cigarette, and they carry their own distinct set of health concerns that most smokers never hear about.
What Goes Into a Clove Cigarette
The core ingredients are straightforward: tobacco and cloves. But manufacturers also add a flavoring blend called “saus,” a proprietary mixture of essential oils and plant extracts whose exact recipes are closely guarded trade secrets.1PubMed Central. Uncovering cloves: characterization of volatile compounds present in clove cigarettes The saus varies from brand to brand and is a major reason different kreteks can taste so different from one another. Think of it as a spice cabinet that each manufacturer curates on its own. Some blends lean toward anise-like sweetness, others toward vanilla or cinnamon-adjacent flavors, all layered over the clove base.
Cloves themselves contain eugenol, an oily compound that gives clove its signature warm, slightly numbing bite. Eugenol is the single most important chemical distinction between a clove cigarette and a regular one, and it shapes nearly everything about how kreteks feel to smoke, how they affect the body, and why regulators have taken a particular interest in them.
How the Smoke Differs Chemically
When cloves burn alongside tobacco, they change the smoke in ways that go well beyond flavor. Testing across 33 Indonesian kretek brands found eugenol levels ranging from about 2,500 to nearly 38,000 micrograms per cigarette, amounts far exceeding anything found in American commercial cigarettes.2PubMed. Determination of eugenol, anethole, and coumarin in the mainstream cigarette smoke of Indonesian clove cigarettes Two other compounds, anethole and coumarin, were also detected at elevated levels in many brands. Anethole is the compound responsible for the licorice-like taste of anise and fennel; coumarin has a sweet, hay-like scent and is the same chemical that gives freshly mowed grass its smell.
Beyond those signature compounds, burning cloves shifts the broader chemistry of the smoke. Compared with American-blended cigarettes, kreteks tend to produce lower levels of certain lightweight toxic byproducts like aldehydes and small hydrocarbons. That sounds like good news, but the picture is more complicated: levels of cancer-linked polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons stayed the same, and phenol levels actually went up.3PubMed. Toxicological assessment of kretek cigarettes: Part 2: kretek and American-blended cigarettes, smoke chemistry and in vitro toxicity In other words, the clove component reshuffles which toxins are present rather than simply reducing them.
The Nicotine Paradox
One of the most counterintuitive things about clove cigarettes is how they handle nicotine. A popular kretek brand (Djarum Special) had roughly 7.4 milligrams of nicotine in its filler, compared with 13 milligrams in a typical conventional cigarette. You might expect that to mean less nicotine reaches the smoker. It doesn’t. Standardized machine-smoking tests showed that the clove cigarette actually delivered more nicotine, more carbon monoxide, and more tar per cigarette than conventional brands.4PubMed. Clove cigarette smoking: biochemical, physiological, and subjective effects
The reason has to do with how people smoke them. In the same study, smokers took an average of about 15 puffs over roughly nine minutes to finish a clove cigarette, compared with about 9 puffs over five minutes for their usual brand. Kreteks burn more slowly, and the sweet, numbed sensation in the throat encourages longer, deeper drags. The result is that blood nicotine levels after smoking a clove cigarette were essentially identical to those after a conventional cigarette, around 17 nanograms per milliliter, despite the lower nicotine content of the filler itself.4PubMed. Clove cigarette smoking: biochemical, physiological, and subjective effects The carbon monoxide exposure was also comparable. So whatever advantage the lower nicotine filler might seem to offer is wiped out by smoking behavior.
Why Clove Cigarettes Feel Different in the Throat
If you have ever had a toothache treated with clove oil, you already know what eugenol does: it numbs tissue on contact. Dentists have used eugenol for years as a topical analgesic because it temporarily dulls nerve sensitivity. When volunteers applied eugenol to the tongue in controlled experiments, the most commonly reported sensation was numbness, reported by about 63% of participants, followed by tingling and warming.5PubMed Central. Eugenol and carvacrol induce temporally desensitizing patterns of oral irritation and enhance innocuous warmth and noxious heat sensation on the tongue Eugenol also reduced the ability to detect a light touch stimulus on the treated area, confirming that it genuinely dampens local sensation rather than just masking it with a competing flavor.
When that same compound is inhaled as a component of cigarette smoke, it coats the throat and upper airway. The practical effect is that the harshness and irritation you would normally feel from hot, particulate-laden smoke gets dialed down. Smoking feels smoother. For someone trying a cigarette for the first time, the reduced throat sting can make the experience much more tolerable. That smoothness is a big part of why clove cigarettes have historically appealed to younger or newer smokers: the product effectively anesthetizes the body’s warning signals that smoke is doing damage.
Acute Health Risks Specific to Kreteks
The numbing quality of eugenol creates a risk that goes beyond just masking harshness. Because eugenol can suppress the gag reflex, some individuals with otherwise normal respiratory systems have developed aspiration pneumonitis after smoking clove cigarettes. In those cases, the reduced protective reflexes allowed smoke, secretions, or particulate matter to be inhaled deeper into the lungs than the body would normally permit.6PubMed. Evaluation of the health hazard of clove cigarettes
In the United States, clove cigarettes were linked to at least 13 cases of serious illness, including hemorrhagic pulmonary edema, pneumonia, bronchitis, and coughing up blood.7PubMed Central. Clove cigarettes. The basis for concern regarding health effects These weren’t chronic-smoker diseases that build up over decades. They were acute events, sometimes occurring after relatively limited exposure. While 13 cases may sound small, they were notable enough to draw early regulatory attention to the product, especially given that clove cigarettes were a niche product in the US market at the time.
Long-Term Disease and Cardiovascular Risk
For chronic health outcomes, the evidence points in the same direction as regular cigarettes, with some added wrinkles. A systematic review of kretek health risks found that all six studies examining cardiovascular disease reported positive associations with kretek use.8Nicotine & Tobacco Research. Health Risks of Kretek Cigarettes: A Systematic Review In one large Indonesian study of nearly 110,000 participants aged 45 and older, kretek smokers had elevated odds of cardiovascular disease compared with nonsmokers. People who smoked a mix of kreteks and regular cigarettes had even higher odds. The findings are a useful corrective to the idea that cloves might dilute the danger of the tobacco they’re mixed with.
It is worth noting that research on long-term kretek-specific outcomes is still relatively thin compared with the mountain of evidence on conventional cigarettes. Much of the chronic disease data comes from Indonesia, where kreteks dominate the market, and disentangling the effects of cloves from the effects of tobacco itself is genuinely difficult. But no credible study has suggested that the addition of cloves makes cigarettes safer. The consistent finding is that clove cigarettes carry at least the same chronic disease risks as conventional ones, and may carry additional acute risks from eugenol.
The “Safer” Myth and Why It Persists
The perception that clove cigarettes are somehow lighter or less harmful than regular cigarettes is remarkably persistent. Research on how people perceive flavored tobacco helps explain why. Systematic reviews have found that tobacco products with flavor descriptors tend to be rated as more appealing and less harmful by both tobacco users and non-users.9Tobacco Control. Impact of non-menthol flavours in tobacco products on perceptions and use among youth, young adults and adults: a systematic review The presence of a recognizable spice or herb in the name primes people to think of the product as more “natural” and therefore gentler, regardless of what the smoke actually contains.
Qualitative research with young people echoes this pattern from a different angle. When asked about clove cigarettes, sensory experience dominated the conversation: some found the taste appealing, others described it as soapy or unpleasant. But a recurring theme was the belief that kreteks were pharmacologically weaker, with comments like “I had to smoke more of them to get the same nicotine fix” and “It’s different, it’s not a cigarette.”10PubMed Central. Knowledge of Alternative Tobacco Products in Unaccompanied Homeless Youth The irony is that machine-testing and blood-level data show the opposite: a single clove cigarette delivers at least as much nicotine as a conventional one. But the sweet taste and numbed throat make the experience feel milder, and subjective feeling wins out over pharmacology in most people’s risk calculus.
The US Ban and the Cigar Loophole
In 2009, the United States passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which banned cigarettes with “characterizing flavors” other than tobacco or menthol. Clove cigarettes were explicitly targeted, based on evidence that flavored cigarettes appealed disproportionately to young people. The intent was to remove products that served as on-ramps to regular smoking.
What happened next is a case study in regulatory workarounds. Kretek International, the company behind Djarum, reformulated its clove products to meet the legal definition of “cigars” rather than “cigarettes,” since the flavor ban did not extend to cigars. The products looked and smoked almost identically to the old clove cigarettes, but were wrapped in a tobacco leaf or homogenized tobacco wrapper instead of paper. Sales of Djarum clove cigars skyrocketed by more than 1,400% between 2009 and 2012.11Tobacco Control. Clove cigar sales following the US flavoured cigarette ban In practical terms, the ban shifted the product’s classification on paper without meaningfully changing what consumers were inhaling. The lesson is that if you see clove-flavored “cigars” or “cigarillos” sold in the US today, they are functionally very close to the clove cigarettes that were banned.
Kreteks in Indonesia and Their Cultural Weight
Outside the US and Europe, clove cigarettes aren’t a niche curiosity. They are the dominant tobacco product in the world’s fourth most populous country. About a third of Indonesian adults smoke tobacco, and roughly 90% of those smokers use kreteks.12PubMed. A Cross Sectional Study of Kretek Smoking in Indonesia as a Major Risk to Public Health The habit skews overwhelmingly male: about 61% of Indonesian men smoke kreteks, compared with just over 2% of women. Smoking rates peak in middle age and are higher among people with less education and lower incomes.
The kretek industry is deeply embedded in Indonesia’s economy. It is reportedly the country’s second-largest employer after the government itself, with somewhere between 4 and 17 million people working across cultivation, trading, manufacturing, transport, and advertising.13ASEAS – Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies. Tobacco and Kretek: Indonesian Drugs in Historical Change That economic entanglement makes tobacco regulation in Indonesia politically complicated in ways that outsiders sometimes underestimate. The government depends on kretek tax revenue, clove farmers depend on the industry for their livelihoods, and the product carries a cultural identity that intertwines with national pride. Efforts to regulate kreteks in Indonesia therefore run into a very different set of obstacles than the ones facing tobacco policy in the US or Europe.
How Smoking Behavior Changes with Kreteks
One detail that gets overlooked in most comparisons is that clove cigarettes don’t just differ in what’s inside them. They change the way people smoke. As noted earlier, the average time to finish a kretek in controlled testing was roughly nine minutes, compared with about five minutes for a conventional cigarette. Smokers also took about 60% more puffs.4PubMed. Clove cigarette smoking: biochemical, physiological, and subjective effects This pattern has practical implications beyond nicotine delivery.
A longer smoking session means a longer window of exposure to carbon monoxide and particulate matter. It also means more secondhand smoke in shared spaces. If you are around someone smoking a kretek, the exposure window is roughly twice as long per cigarette as it would be with a conventional brand. The distinctive sweet smell of clove smoke may also lower the social resistance to smoking indoors or near others, since bystanders sometimes find it less objectionable than the smell of standard cigarette smoke. That is speculation more than established fact, but the reduced throat irritation for the smoker and the reduced smell-aversion for nearby people both push in the direction of more smoke exposure for everyone involved.
Eugenol Beyond Clove Cigarettes
Eugenol itself is not an obscure chemical. You encounter it in clove-flavored toothpaste, in certain mouthwashes, in temporary dental fillings, and as a flavoring agent in foods. At low oral doses, it’s generally recognized as safe by food regulatory agencies. The concern with clove cigarettes is specifically about inhaling large quantities of eugenol deep into the lungs, repeatedly and over time. That is a fundamentally different route of exposure than eating a dish flavored with clove or swishing mouthwash for thirty seconds.
The distinction matters because people sometimes reason that since cloves are “just a spice,” smoking them can’t be that bad. The flaw in that reasoning is that combustion transforms ingredients. Eugenol in smoke is delivered alongside tar, carbon monoxide, and hundreds of other pyrolysis products. And the quantities are not small: at up to nearly 38,000 micrograms per cigarette, even moderate kretek smoking means inhaling milligrams of eugenol daily, directly into lung tissue that was never designed to handle it.
What Flavored Tobacco Regulations Miss
The US clove cigarette ban was one of the first major moves to regulate flavored tobacco, and its aftermath illustrates a recurring theme in tobacco policy. Banning a specific product category without addressing close substitutes tends to push consumption sideways rather than downward. The more-than-1,400% increase in clove cigar sales after the cigarette ban is a stark example.11Tobacco Control. Clove cigar sales following the US flavoured cigarette ban The same dynamic has played out with menthol and with flavored e-cigarettes: restricting one delivery system without restricting the flavor itself tends to produce creative relabeling by manufacturers.
For consumers, the practical takeaway is straightforward. A clove cigarillo bought at a US convenience store today is, for all health-relevant purposes, a clove cigarette. The wrapper material differs, and the legal classification differs, but the smoke chemistry, the eugenol delivery, the nicotine exposure, and the associated risks are functionally the same. The word “cigar” on the package is a regulatory artifact, not a meaningful health distinction. If you are choosing between products, the presence of cloves changes the flavor and the throat sensation, but it does not reduce the danger.