Box of smoke

A more practical act of famous product label confusion can be found in the Morlboro Lights tobacco smoking kit ($22 at The Station in Inkster). This item is a plastic box shaped just like a box of standard Marlboro cigarettes – almost. The outside of the box looks the same except for the slight misspelling – Morlboro – and the small peace symbol in the crest of the label. And, for some reason, this redesigned pack contains two sections: One holds a metal tube painted to look just like a standard cigarette, in which you can place small amounts of tobacco; the other is a compartment for storing said tobacco.

One thing I don’t understand is, why can’t smokers just buy a regular pack of Marlboros (with the correct spelling) or carry loose tobacco in the package it comes in? Perhaps, just maybe, kids are daring to use this product for smoking marijuana? If so, this throws the whole "gateway drug" theory out of whack, because, as everyone knows, pot leads to the use of "hard drugs," right? And here we have a case of pot causing people to buy fake versions of legal cigarettes. The lesson must be that marijuana could be a good gateway drug leading back to the "safer" drugs of tobacco and alcohol.

Tom A’Hearn pays attention here every other week. E-mail [email protected]