i feel it has been a reasonable amount of time since i gone done a post on the subject of cigarettes so, with little else to write of, time for another. for those of you who(m) pay the slightest bit of interest to anything i write, let me remind you that smoking is (very) bad for you, look you see, and you should either never take up the habit (or hobby) or cease (quit) immediately. help is available, apparently, only just not so much as if you were doing heroin, or some other thing which society deems rather more acceptable.
with that out of the way, yes, another foray into the world of the more modest (as in sensibly) priced cigarettes procured from independent importers and distributors. yes, quite probably all within the realms (if not remit) of "not legal", but if i ask no questions i get to keep a nice, quiet life in which i can continue to smoke. probably should stop (as in quit), yet no.
how the world changes. once it was so (say late 80s, more plausibly early 90s) that lambert and butler, which are the ones (cigarettes) i am currently "on" (smoking) were seen as a sort of cheap and cheerful brand, a sub-par smoking experience. back then it was the likes of embassy, regal, of course marlboro, benson and hedges and what not which were "proper". if you had the misfortune to be in that there London (innit) then of course you smoked silk cut, unless you were royalty (or nobility) and then it was pure john player specials, carrying as they did the royal seal (or warrant if that is the right term). of course now the re-branded "players" are cheap, whereas lambert and butler have a strange resonance of a posher brand than they ever were.
make no mistake, these ones what i have are 100% counterfeit. there are telling (or if you will warning) signs, all fairly easy to spot. for a start, or to commence, the boxes are not sturdy at all, made of a cardboard so thin it would pass as paper. the font use is ever so slightly off, and the "foil" paper in the packets is either silver or a somewhat dull gold. as in not the same across all packets. you can't really make it out in the above (VHS mode) image, but on the cigarettes themselves that's not the generic, plain text font what is supposed to be used.
certainly more effort has been put into the appearance of these than, say, the hit and miss Manchester ones i took a shine to, but at least them ones had a pretty solid, or if you will "proper", box. these cost me the same as those Manchester ones, which is a flat £5 per packet. i do believe in some parts of our land they can cost more, but then again also i have heard tales of the Manchester ones being sold for even less ("fewer") that the agreeably cheap price i have paid for them.
this pricing tells you all of the absurdity of the pricing for "real" cigarettes, and why independent distributors here are both in proliferation and quite successful. for those not in the know, the price for these is south of one third of the cost of "real" ones down the shops. yes, that is how much us smokers get f****d over. and when they have destroyed entire the market for "legal" cigarettes in this country, know that they will be coming for you, be it your drink, food or whatever they believe they can punish you for with little beyond a murmur of disappointment.
quite peculiar (or somewhat strange) that all "warnings", it seems, on the cigarettes i procure pertain to how it may affect my private parts, or winkie, or whatever you may wish to call male bits. here is a link to the most recent packs cautioning the same. one would assume this means as much to a lady smoker as the warnings about smoking whilst pregnant mean to me. nice that even the bootleggers are concerned for us in this regard, and indeed the "duty free" thing is a lovely touch.
fairly recently there was a lovely "puff piece" (so to speak) in the news, concerning a "nationwide raid" on shops what sell things like vapes not meeting "standards", and cigarettes. with a straight face some spokesperson said that these independent cigarettes were "not as safe" as "legitimate ones". i believe that they meant "not as profitable for the government". realistically they likely hit all of "fewer" than 1% of such independent businesses, and even then ones thrown to them. it's like drug mules on a plane, those packing people with narcotics tip off the authorities about one of them so the others they have placed on the same flight waltz straight through customs. just the illusion of a victory on "the war on" whatever they don't like at the moment.
do i feel at all upset about how purchasing "independent" cigarettes (such as these) is in some way funding criminals, terrorists, most probably the Russian war effort? well, i am not happy about it, but needs must. i could be flippant and say "look how government squanders the money from taxes". after all, official smoking figures are at their lowest ("fewest") and the NHS is more totes f****d than ever, when in the 80s and 90s all we heard was how once smoking was reducing how brilliant the NHS, free of treating smokers, would be.
should it really be so that those absolute pr!cks, w@nker$ and freeloaders in government really, really wish to stop people purchasing "independent" cigarettes, there's an easy way to do it. right now, and yes i am including travel costs, if you fly to somewhere like Spain, Greece or some Eastern European nation, purchase a carton (10 packs of 20 cigarettes each) of Marlboro - not duty free, but from a shop - and fly back you would have saved £100 cost on buying the same quantity in the UK. no, of course they won't reduce the price here. that filthy lucre, all that lovely money, is too addictive for them.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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