Can Green Tea Cigarettes Help You Quit Smoking?

Other than drinking, green tea can be used for a number of things. Matcha has become one of our favorite baking ingredients, and used tea bags can help prevent puffy eyes. Now, you can smoke tea, too. But wait, there's more — green tea cigarettes, called Billys, are being used to help kick the tobacco habit, according to Time.

Ranko Tutulugdzija, founder of the company behind these nicotine-free cigarettes, Billy55, claims that they can help smokers quit smoking by replacing the more harmful cigarette with a better one. However, Time asserts, there is no scientific evidence that these cigarettes can help smokers quit.

Still, they might be worth trying, given tea's track record. At $2.50 a pack, Billys are made entirely of green tea leaves from Nanjing and Beijing, China, and are available in regular and menthol flavors. (A black tea version of the cigarettes is in the works: Tutulugdzija has an IndieGoGo page set up with the goal of raising $50,000 to produce the black tea cigarettes.)

The acupuncturist packages the cigarettes as a 90-day program that is designed to help smokers quit and "includes taping five mustard seeds onto acupressure points." Time reports that the cigarettes themselves don't offer much of a green tea flavor, however.