i just remembered! this one time they were giving out free samples on a street corner downtown. so of course i availed myself of as many as possible. i was, maybe, fifteen or sixteen. god, remember those days? anyway, i figured that theory was tissue-thin if even that.

there was a time when american spirit would send you a whole sampler of all their varieties for free if you asked, as long as you said that you owned or worked at an establishment that sold cigarettes. i think they were willing to be loose with that in hopes that they’d hook some new customers.

truly a pernicious and evil drug, which i wax nostalgic for almost every day.

And back when they’d sell them to minors, I’d have to run into the store to pick them up when Mom was in a hurry.

that’s rather uncanny, because the only other Parliament smokers i’ve ever met were…..UC Berkeley students!

i never even tried menthols until bumming some off of my friends in Nawlins. anecdotally, the correlation would appear to have some merit (no pun intended).

Not-Not -

all the people i knew who did the “other drugs” smoked camel filters if they had the money, and bummed whatever i was smoking if they did not. i always enjoyed handing them one of my non-filters and watching them choke on them and sputter, “how the hell can you smoke these things?” this from people who would smoke anything green, wrapped in newspaper if that was all that was available.

Ha!

“It feels so great on my throat, man.”
“Yeah, like I have an ice cube right there.”
“Touch my face!”

there was a period of time when some of us affectatiously smoked Lucky Strikes, i supposed to prove how punk rock we were; the real punk rockers, of course, smoked red pack Marlboros and thought nothing of it. [it was the heshers who smoked camels. i don't know if any of them wrote poetry. maybe in their suicide notes.]

although to tell you the truth - the article is bogus, in that it suggests no category for those who smoke Export A’s, Rothmans, Dunhills, Shermans, Galois, Gitanes, Kreteks, Bidis, etc. oh, wait a minute, that’s right - i grew up in Berkeley. never mind.