Cigarette
Manufacturers See Huge and Smokin' Profits Ahead
"Mmmm.
Menthol freshness." There's nothing
like a nerve-calming smoke before or after
a harrowing firefight.
|
Almost
every time we saw the face of a soldier or a Marine
on the road to Baghdad on our TV screens, he or someone
near him was smoking a cigarette. The coverage has
been a boon for the long-suffering and beleaguered
tobacco industry.
“It’s
like World War II all over again. We’re about
to enter a new era of surging tobacco sales,” said
Ross Roswell of Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em,
a Washington lobbying firm representing the tobacco
industry, “The dog-faced GI. The grunt. Unshaven.
Gritty. Smoking. You couldn’t ask for a better
marketing campaign. This is going to make the Marlboro
Man look like a Girl Scout.”
Statistics
are not yet available on what brand of cigarettes
were preferred by US fighting forces, but sources
within the military suggest that the leaders will
likely be Marlboro Reds and Kools.
“After
that you got your Winstons and your Salems, but by
and large, it should be Marlboro and Kool way ahead
with a possible showing by Camel,” said the
source.
“Smoking
is coming back out of the closet,” said Roswell, “and
while we hail our military heroes for all they did
in Iraq, the tobacco farmers of America would like
to also thank them for liberating this troubled and
besieged pillar and foundation of America.”
Tobacco
lobbyists are hoping to gain even broader acceptance
of smoking by reintroducing miniature cigarette packs
into the government’s MRE packets.
“The
old K-rations and C-rations always had smokes in
them, then we all got politically correct and stopped
that,” says Roswell, “but we argue that
including cigarettes in the MRE package will cut
down on the black-marketing that is surely going
on right now among our troops in Iraq.”
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Radio Free Babylon™, LLC All Rights Reserved.
