MELLIPOP AND MARLBORO WHITES?

Ok, so the anti-tobacco lobby has struck again. Riding as high in my personal estimation as say, the religious right, these "Guardians of Public Health and Morality" have now destroyed the humble Marlboro Light cigarette, in a characteristically hubristic episode of PC arrogance.

Now, for the non-smoker, a brief synopsis. The anti-tobacco lobby have successfully lobbied (funny, that...) to have tobacco pushers change the name of Marlboro Lights cigarettes, claiming that the "Lights" moniker implies that the deleterious effects of smoking are perceived to be lessened by smoking that particular brand.

Not true, and any smoker worth his weight in nicotine knows that smoking "light" cigarettes is like eating "lite" camembert (and the ones who don't know this deserve to be culled from the gene pool for their extreme stupidity anyway). In the first instance, we know that it will still kill us just as in the second instance we know it will still make us fat.

So anyway, the upshot is that the distinctive Marlboro Lights brand cigarettes are now called Marlboro.... Well, they haven't actually replaced the "Light" with anything else. Maybe they should just call them Marlboro Death. Or Marlboro Darks, just like the inside of our lungs and the inside of our coffins, which with every cigarette we draw irrevocably closer to.

I mean, I don't care about the name change. I’d still smoke them if they were called “Syphillitic Cock”. I don’t even care that they have also changed the filter butt to yellow when it was once a far more aesthetically pleasing white, which always singled you out as an afficionado of the Light - or the menthol smoker, but that’s a different story. Even us smokers revile the Menthol set.

The problem is though, THEY TASTE DIFFERENT NOW.

To be more precise…. THEY TASTE SHIT NOW.

What was once a smooth and delicious tasting cigarette, is now an experience to rival that of smoking fucking Longbeach or Holiday 50’s. There is a harshness and a cheapness about the flavour that is completely alien to what the Marlboro Light once stood for.

And I’ve spoken to other Marlboro Lights connoisseurs about this. I’ve done my research. Each and every one of them has noticed the difference. For a while there I actually thought that I kept being sold cheap Asian knock-off Lights - thinking that they had flooded the Perth market - until informed about the recent PC-hysteria driven change.

So I don’t know if the manufacturers were also forced to alter the delicate balance of carcinogenic toxins that made the Marlboro Light the king of cigarettes, but it would seem that way. Either way, the Marlboro’s loss is mourned here.

Are you happy now, anti-smoking lobby? Now we can’t even enjoy the experience of killing ourselves slowly. But the thing is, shit or not we’ll still smoke them. And you know that, don’t you? Miserable bastards.

But you know what? I buy rollies now anyway because I'm poor, so this is not the catastrophe you think it is. Stick THAT in your ass-pipe and SMOKE it.


P.S. Geez... You guys know that I'm seriously taking the piss here, right? I don't want to come across as some crazy cigarette apologist/fundamentalist. Cigarettes are bad for you. Don't smoke. See you on the other side of hell (no, not the Perth side - the OTHER side).