WASHINGTON (CAP) - Although the Food and Drug Administration has long since banned cigarettes with fruit or candy flavors, the agency is now reporting they have approved the sale of cigarettes that taste like ass, toejam and other atypical flavors. The move is meant to reduce the appeal of smoking to young people who might not like the taste of ass.
"You say toejam, I say Fritos. I think they taste pretty good," said Philip Morris CEO Louis Camilleri, whose company recently declared a cure for cancer. "I mean, come on - sweaty jockstrap is just a name. Don't knock it till you try it."
The FDA reports studies have shown that teen-aged smokers are 35 percent less likely to choose a cigarette with an unpleasant taste, like expired milk, than their counterparts who have been smoking for more than a decade. A Philip Morris official who spoke with CAP News on the condition of anonymity said the company made the new flavors as more of an inside joke than anything else.
"We had a good laugh inside the lab, and now we're laughing all the way to the bank," said the official. "Smokers are idiots, they'll friggin' smoke anything. You think their breath and fingers smell bad with regular cigs, wait till they light up one of our new squirrel roadkill flavors. Morons."
According to the official, Philip Morris opted to fight the obvious uphill battle of marketing such an unpleasant cigarette by selling packs at half the price of regular brands. In trial runs at a handful of convenience stores in the midwest, he said the result was nothing short of a "Pavlovian dream come true."
"Smokers were falling all over themselves buying up our premiere flavor, cat piss, just because of the price," the official recalled. "Morons."
Cigarette makers aren't the only ones for whom the FDA allowance applies: cigar, pipe tobacco and smokeless tobacco manufacturers are also getting in on the action. Connecticut-based UST Inc. has announced three new flavors of its popular Skoal brand dipping tobacco: soggy cardboard, rancid meat and rusty nail.
"You go buy your favorite bag of potato chips and it's chock full of additives, preservatives and artificial flavors," said Skoal Vice President of Marketing Terrence Larkin. "Not us. We're 100 percent natural. We didn't come up with rusty nail flavor in a lab. We used a rusty nail."
The FDA is warning consumers to be wary of blackmarket cigarettes sold on the Internet as the agency has no oversight of companies based outside the United States. There have been reports of some people getting bad ass from cigarettes purchased online via overseas outfits.
- CAP News Staff