HOW SMOKING HAS CHANGED

I don't believe in smoking...it's obviously bad for you...but I do believe in being honest about whatever benefits it does bestow.

Maybe I should say "used to bestow," because those benefits have largely disappeared now. I don't think new cigarettes are the same as the ones our grandparents smoked.

The new cigarettes produce a vague haze. Their smoke has no shape or character.

Older cigarettes, on the other hand,  produced a clinging anaconda capable of wrapping around the smoker's head.

The smoke was stringy and artistic. The cigarette produced evolving pictures all by itself,  even when the smoker wasn't trying.

I'm guessing that filters are the problem. In filtering out some of the tars and nicotine you filter out the giraffes and porpoises the tobacco wants to sculpt.

Losing the nicotine and keeping the strings must have been a daunting technical challenge for the cigarette industry. And how do you keep the flow of filtered smoke aggressive and energetic, the way smokers like?  How do you get the billowing that some smokers like?

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe filters are innocent and it's the tobacco itself that's been tampered with. After all, that industry took a hard hit for producing second hand smoke. Maybe new strains were developed that deliberately produced diffuse smoke.

I don't know.