They want us to smoke more
I wandered into Local Shop over the weekend.
There was a new girl behind the counter who cheerfully asked what she could get me. I asked for a couple of packs of Silk Cut Purple fags.
In common with most shops I have been in over the last years, Local Shop has a cigarette dispensing machine. There’s a wee keypad, and when they press a button the correct pack drops down to a trough. Local Shop quite often don’t bother with keypads and usually just open the doors, subjecting all those in the shop to the full glare of advertising from the packets within, and causing all children within a hundred yards to immediately become hooked on Nicotine.
New Girl though just decided to use the keypad. She pressed the button a couple of times but only one pack dropped out. She muttered something uncomplimentary and hesitantly opened the machine’s doors. She looked in blank bewilderment at the multiple columns of packets. I told her that the Purple was in the right hand door. She looked where I pointed but the rack was empty. She called the shop owner.
He came over, looked at the empty rack and then said the manufacturer had discontinued them. What the fuck? No, says he, they have stopped making them. He asked if I wanted the replacement – Silk Cut Purple in a 23 pack, which apparently has something to do with the new regulations that are coming in. We pondered the logic of this move while a crowd of pre-pubescent children formed behind me all clamoring for glamorous packs of Marlboro and Benson & Hedges. Why had they decided on 23, and not 20 or 25? It didn’t make sense. The only logical conclusion was that the law wanted us to smoke more.
Anyhows he then had to look for where the new supply was stocked in the machine which meant double checking each pack to make sure it was a Purple and not a Blue. I cheerfully remarked that they would have great fun and games when all the packs were identical regardless of manufacturer or brand.
“That shower and their fucking senseless laws are a curse” he replied.
I couldn’t have agreed more.
I also couldn’t agree more.
Having just returned from the shop to discover the pouch of Drum I have just bought was infact ‘Drum Gold”. Fortunately whilst ‘gold’ is a bit girly for my tastes I can still smoke it…even if i have to smoke more to get the ‘hit’.
Anyways I have learnt my lesson. In future , no matter how long and impatient the queue of people wanting to buy lottery tickets is (don’t they have internets at home?!) I shall leisurely take my reading glasses out of my pocket and STUDY intently the ‘go blind’ font at the bottom of the packet. I mean, I shudder to think what I might have been sold in error…Cutters Crap even!
The use of vending machines should lead to few mistakes with brands [provided they put the packs in the correct slots] but I am concerned about pipe [and rollie] tobacco as they are usually kept in a drawer where they can very easily get mixed together. Now I can simply glance at the drawer and see my green pack, but if they all look the same it’s going to be a nightmare. As you say – long queues at the counter.
Are the Silk Cut packs the same size as they used to be? If so, that would suggest that the cigarettes are slimmer. But I can’t for the life of me think of a reason for that. (A sane reason, I mean.)
There is no sane reason for anything that comes out of Tobacco Control and their army of useful idiots. As far as they’re concerned, if it makes life for smokers yet more difficult, then it’s deemed a success.
Perhaps Silk Cut have had to conform to certain pack dimensions or somesuch, and 20 fags would have just been rattling around inside? Dunno mate, it doesn’t make any sense to me, either.
The pack is a different size [slightly larger] so I would tend to go with the theory that they need an extra three fags to fill out the space. If this is the case, then Tobacco Control really are encouraging people to smoke more, just as they did when banning the 10-packs.
It really is insane.
Slightly off topic but harking back to the Thai/Loatian tobacco a ‘mate’ (I’m rapidly rethinking that bit ) brought me back from his backpacking tour. Last night I rehydrated all the samples and have now just tried the first one- the Thai ’10 g bought at local store’ one. Let the The Bestes Frau In The World take a sniff of the opened packet- her nose is way better than mine. She screwed up her little fat face and said ‘uuuuughh it smells of PISS’. Took another whiff myself and i could see what she meant, rather a ‘uric acid’ smell which i had hoped was nearer to my beloved semois than the contents of a pub urinal.
No matter, for I am a professional,happy to suffer for my art. I rolled myself one (and rolling it it was obvious that it was indeed hand cut with a big knife, not machined) and then lit up.
Now bear in mind I am quite happy to smoke filterless caporal/black tobacco fags all day everyday. I use up to 50g of rolling tobacco a day and when I make my own then from tobacco that is strong enough to be classed as an insecticide and ‘not for human consumption’. I really have no problem with STRONG, with lethal doses of Vitamin N.
My head is still pounding. I’m still coughing up lumps of bronchial lining. But it’s weird, it doesn’t feel like its strength was nicotine-not as I know it. My head isn’t spinning. I have had a lot of experience gauging the strength of various tobaccos from one fag. I’m now wondering if it was actually tobacco as in Nicotiana. I have a feeling it might actually have been some variety of ‘jungle’ tobacco (rustica? slyvestris?) and cut green.
I shall be asking my mate for more details and maybe find someone who can translate the Thai squiggles on the packet.
Just incase anyone is remotely interested or anyone reading knows more details about what the fuck it actually was.
With regards what’s written on the packet of Thai tobacco, I’m reliably informed that the big lettering says “Tobacco Airplane Orb (Globe?)” (Yah Sen Kreung Bin Luklok ), which is the name of the brand of the tobacco. Either side of the ‘orb’ is written that it’s a trademark, and the trademark number. Under the Large letters at the bottom is written “1st quality local tobacco”, and under that is the name of the manufacturing company. To one side of that is the price – 5 Baht.
I didn’t ask what the writing on the medico-porn said. Probably “This tobacco will kill everyone within a five mile radius when smoked”.
By the sound of it, BD, you should be able to launch a fairly credible terrorist attack with that tobacco. Smoke a ciggy in a shopping centre, and the emergency services will all be scrambled to deal with the horrific numbers of casualties piled up everywhere.
Your mate obviously took a big risk, transporting a WMD like that for your delectation. Greater love hath no man and all that…
And I am grateful to him, I do recall saying to him I wanted the meanest, baddest, Thai tobacco he could lay his grubby paws on. And he certainly didn’t disappoint. My respect for my brother smokers in Thailand has gone up mightily. It took over an hour for me to ‘recover’ from that one cigarette.
Thanks for the translation. I have a feeling the clue might be in the phrase ‘local tobacco’. One of the things that surprised me about the tobacco was the taste. I couldn’t identify a variety of tobacco. Although my taste buds are f**ked from years of weapons grade alcoholism I can almost always ‘taste’ which is the predominate variety used in a tobacco..ie Burley, Virginia, Oriental, Kentucky etc etc. This time I couldn’t.
Excessive dependence on cigarette vending machines is to be discouraged, along with other attempts to replace the smiling human vendor behind the counter with other unsmiling machines.
I only use the ciggie vending machines in my local cafés when the tobacconist down the road is closed. I don’t know whether it’s my ineptitude, or that of the machines, but it invariably needs the assistance of a member of staff to get the machine to disgorge what I want. (Well, not really what I want, but the nearest equivalent it stocks.)
Cigarettes “vending machines” why I remember them, here the Tartan Taliban put all them vending machine companies out of business years ago, after they were banned.
My local used to have one, always a poor substitute for a full pack of 20, when the machine coughed up 16 a pack, still if it was pissing down outside saved you getting damp by taking a right hand turn out of the pub and a 1 minute walk to the local shop for a full pack.
Naturally the main illogical argument give was that the machines might be seen by a cheeldren in the pub and it would encourage the poor little lambs to crowbar it open in a nicotine deprived frenzy, despite the fact that the only kids ever seen in my local were the landlords kids who popped in to be taken home by him after school.
No doubt after all that machine/packet/SHS exposure the poor kids are on a slab by now or in an iron lung…
So far as I know they are more or less banned here too. The machines the shops use are massive wall-hanging units with a separate little keypad box. The keypad box has a slot where the shopkeeper feeds in large denomination notes to build up credit. In other words, the device doesn’t have a slot for coins or anything like that.
I seem to remember that, many years ago, there was a time when machine-vended packs contained only 18 cigarettes. (Alas, I didn’t realise how important it would be to keep detailed notes!) I think it may’ve had something to do with maintaining the pack price when the tobacco duty increased? Perhaps, back then, it was too difficult to re-program the innards of the machine to change the pack price?
I recall a time back in the late 80s/early 90s when the 20 pack of my favourite smokes out of the vending machine came with a 10 pfennig coin taped to the outside to make up the value to 4 DMarks! Which was handy as in the pre-cell phones days phone boxes took 10 pfennig coins. Ahhh those innocent days when my small kids would argue among themselves who was to go to the Zigarettenautomat (fag machine on every street corner) for their dear Ol’ Dad (and thereby snaffle the 10pf for sweeties).
I recall my, by then adult, youngest almost crying the day they digitized the street cigarette machines and one then needed an ID card to use them, part of his childhood died there, right there,and then. His own kids will never know the thrill of being trusted enough to go and put money in a slot, of bearing the weight of responsibility of having to choose an acceptable brand if Daddys’ brand was out of stock. Never know the joy of an unexpected 10 pennies worth of teeth rotting sweetness.
edit* or was it a 5pf coin taped to the outside? I forget.
“Why had they decided on 23, and not 20 or 25?”
My local tobacconist told me the reason for this was that instead of putting up the price of a pack of 25 the tobacco companies decided to cut the number to 23 thus keeping the price per pack the same despite tax increases.
A very likely explanation as in the rest of Europe, ‘big box’ have been a feature for a while now…probably 10 years? Even in those places , like Belgium, where the cigarette tax is still somewhat more humane. I know everytime i go abroad I tend to pick the ‘Big box’ option on any brand. Not because of the price but it’s simply more convenient. But then again I pine for the days when I would simply buy a carton for 50DMarks and get a free lighter. Really miss those free lighters.
Last time i did a baccy run to Belgium, they gave me a box of rather nice ‘sea shell’ pralines and a handful, I mean that, of free disposable lighters. Think that almost made my day as much as only paying a fraction of the UK Duty Splayed price!