In addition to one of the standard Surgeon General’s Warnings, packs of Natural American Spirit cigarettes are labeled:
Made with 100% additive-free, whole leaf, natural tobacco. No reconstituted sheet tobacco. No processed stems. Up to 25% more tobacco than other king size cigarettes.
All of that would, in some convoluted way, probably lead a smoker to believe that these cigarettes are “better” for you than — one would assume — all the other brands of cigarettes. But the fact that these cigarettes profess to contain more tobacco than competing brands is somehow made to seem like a good thing. So the company helpfully adds:
No additives in our tobacco does NOT mean a safer cigarette.
Their website is actually running a promotion right now asking people to send them “Smoker’s Stories”, cute little anecdotes about how much fun people have had smoking, sharing cigarettes, and loving the joy of being a smoker. Conveniently absent are any stories about not being able to climb a flight of stairs, bad hygiene, watching someone you love battle lung cancer, or wasting thousands of dollars on a terribly unattractive habit.
