THEY'RE "SPIVY" AND KIND OF STRONG

A friend came by with five packs of a cigarette I have been keen to try, but which isn't imported because fifteen years ago we legislated against the keeps-on-burning paper which we had invented nota bene and which the rest of the world still thinks is a brilliant idea because it doubled cigarette consumption but we outlawed because less than half a dozen elderly drunks set fire to their wine and pee soaked mattresses over a three or four decade period -- obviously that's a crisis, we must protect the public -- and because the rest of the world thinks that cigarette paper that keeps on burning is all right, very few European cigarettes can be imported into the US dammit.

Damned disapproving puritanical freaks.

Wistfully I remember the Roth-Händle, and Reval Cigarettes.
As well as Khedive, which were divine.
Also St. Michel.


BELOMORKANAL

The black rectangle obscures a horrific photo meant as warning, so that Russia's draft age population will be scared off tobacco. Rather ghastly, and too horrific.


Papirosa from Russia, which are two thirds paper tube, one third tobacco. You pinch the tube to make a semi-filter. The tobacco reminds me of some of the cigarettes which used to be importable (till we changed the regs about the paper). These are very nice. But over half of the people I showed them to kept bringing up disturbing things, totally irrelevant, and something tells me I shouldn't show these to my apartment mate.

Northern Californians have important opinions about many things WHICH MUST BE SHARED! They're nearly as bad as the Dutch. Not that I would know about that .....

I'll just hang out in a dark alley smoking these with my imaginary bottle of cheap vodka. Perhaps there's an abandoned mattress there I can set fire to for warmth.



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