Tobacco News and Interesting Information

In the movie "City of God," after the villain kills every drug dealer in his Brazilian slum to take over their business, the narrator suggests, "If drugs had been legal, (he) would have been man of the year."

If cigarettes weren't so stigmatized - that problem of killing people just doesn't seem to get marketed away - we'd have conservative, business-minded people praising their pushers right and left. But one brand in particular, Camel, deserves a lifetime achievement award.

Camel never gives up. In a way, I admire its tenacity. It's that unbridled ambition and enthusiasm that makes the U.S. the way it is.

Of course, just as these qualities led to manifest destiny, genocide and slavery, Camel's drive to sell sweet, sweet tobacco products has its dark side, too.

We all remember Joe Camel, if statistics are to be believed - the cigarette spokescamel was as identifiable as Mickey Mouse in surveys of elementary-schoolers in the early '90s.

The company introduced the Turkish line of cigarettes after a while, which are slightly lighter and more expensive than regulars and have a pretty blue sky on the package. The filters on Turkish Royals even have criss-crossed lines. Neato.

Recently, Camel added No. 9s to the menu. They come in a cute little black box with pretty pink or turquoise edging, to indicate lights or menthols, respectively. If you love going to Hot Topic and are too old for candy, Camel suggests, then you should smoke No. 9s. The package is helpful in that way.

The Wides are another example of the eternal fountain of marketing. Instead of calling them ultra-cigarettes that taste like crap, Camel hired an artist from New York City to design a package with a flamboyant, graffiti-and-tattoo-influenced style, full of intricate Latin-American motifs. The Aztecs would have smoked them, Camel says, so you should, too. Plus, Camel is hip with art.

But Camel didn't stop with that, not even with the Reds, on which Camel spells its name "Kamel." Now there are Signature Blends, which are promised to be "severely interesting," according to one sign I saw. Specific blends include Frost, which comes in a bright-blue, icy-looking package; Infused, which comes in a package that looks like it's on fire; Mellow, which, judging by the package, is like smoking an ultra-futuristic honeycomb; and Robust, in a purple-red, flowery pack because cigarettes, flowers and coffee are all pretty much the same thing.

So, good going, Camel. I hope you get a lot of teenage girls smoking your cigarettes, so when they're trying to fit in with their rebellious friends, they'll have an easier time pretending to enjoy it.

Of course, if people are going to start smoking because the package looks like candy and the name is cool, they've got more problems than cigarettes. All types of companies push their products on us almost constantly, some just as harmful as cigarettes - have you ever had dark suspicions about the cheese-flavored powder on Cooler Ranch Doritos? - and if we bought everything we were told to, we'd need warehouses of storage space.

My advice? Start smoking if you really love cigarettes and don't mind the health risks or the chance that you'll regret it in the future. Don't, under any circumstances, start smoking just because you really like the color pink.