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Cigarette Brand Guides & Buying Notes

Brand notes, buying guides and dispatch updates. Written for people who already know what they smoke and want the detail a product page cannot carry — how a format differs from its neighbour, what actually changes between two tar ratings, and what to expect when a carton arrives.

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96 articles · page 7 of 8
Japanese & Korean Cigarettes

Are Japanese Cigarettes Different? Yes, in Three Ways

Yes, and the differences are structural rather than branding. A Japanese cigarette is a different engineering answer to the same problem, and the result is recognisa…

May 1, 2021/2 min read
Buying Guides

Online Cigarette Scams: The Patterns That Repeat

Tobacco is an attractive target for fraud because buyers cannot easily verify a seller, the product is high-value per parcel, and the legal grey areas make buyers re…

Feb 4, 2021/2 min read
Buying Guides

Can You Get Cigarettes on DoorDash or Uber Eats?

Sometimes. Tobacco appears on delivery platforms in some US markets and not others, and the pattern is set by state and local licensing rather than by the platforms'…

Nov 11, 2020/2 min read
Buying Guides

Is Buying Cigarettes Online Legit? How to Tell

Both exist, and they look similar from a search results page. The question worth asking is not "is this legal" but "is this a real business selling real product", be…

Mar 1, 2020/2 min read
Buying Guides

How Cartons Are Packed for Shipping

A carton is a well-designed shipping unit: dense, rectangular, and already sealed in cellophane. That is why online tobacco sells by the carton and almost never by t…

Dec 18, 2019/2 min read
Smoking Culture

How Cigarette Packs Became Design Objects

A cigarette pack is a small object with an unusually hard design job: it must be identifiable at three metres, fit a pocket, survive being sat on, and carry a legall…

Sep 15, 2019/2 min read
Buying Guides

How to Spot Fake Newport Cigarettes

Newport's combination of high volume and high brand recognition makes it one of the most counterfeited cartons in the US. The fakes are good enough that the old tell…

Jul 1, 2019/2 min read
Buying Guides

How to Choose a Cigarette Brand

Most people smoke the brand they started with, and most started with whatever was available. If you are buying by the carton, that habit is worth examining, because…

Apr 1, 2019/2 min read
Prices & Duty Free

Are Duty-Free Cigarettes Genuine?

Mostly yes, and the specific risks are different from the ones people worry about. Counterfeiting is less common in duty-free than in informal domestic channels; rel…

Jan 16, 2019/2 min read
Smoking Culture

How Cigarettes Are Made

A cigarette looks simple — paper, filter, tobacco — and the process that produces one is a long agricultural and industrial chain. Here is the sequence, from field t…

Oct 20, 2018/2 min read
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