Nicotine dreams are made of this

Writer: Murray Stewart.

By the time of going to press, the wise old owl controlling our State of Disaster may still be treating us like naughty Grade 10 school kids for smoking. Well, whether the ban has been lifted or not, let’s pop open the bonnet and find out how the engine keeps running and belching smoke – without petrol, apparently.

Those with a long-standing affair with Miss Nicky-T may well inhale through the mouth, but pay through the nose to satisfy the temptress. Despite SARS losing billions in sin taxes, and with contraband smokes now three or four times the normal price, at least some folks are keeping their tills ringing and the home-fires burning. As Shakespeare wrote: Where there’s fire, there’s smokes.

Now, we all know that banning something often creates more demand. Movies and books have glamorised the covert chicanery during America’s Prohibition era of the last century, when alcohol was outlawed. Result? Bootlegging became almost a national sport as hill-billies and city-slickers alike set up moonshine stills and produced hooch which could easily substitute as paint-stripper or aeroplane fuel if packaged differently.

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