Here’s One New Cigarette That’s Death on Smoking

Tired of cigarettes with names like Kool and ads showing smokers relaxing by waterfalls, smashing tennis balls across the net or riding into the healthful high country?

Want to scare yourself with a grim reminder of what cigarettes really do to the body?

Consider Death Cigarettes, a new brand developed by an Oregon cattle rancher. They’re standard cigarettes that look, taste and smell much like the “light” cigarettes offered by major American tobacco companies. They arrive in their own coffin: a stark little black package bearing a skull and crossbones.

On the side is one of the traditional warnings from the surgeon general: “Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and may complicate pregnancy.” On the other side there’s this message: “Manufacturer’s Advice: Cigarettes are addictive and debilitating. If you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you smoke, quit.”

But wait. There’s more. On a slip of paper inside each carton, the preaching continues: “We have packaged these cigarettes in this manner with the intention that perhaps you, the smoker, looking at this symbol every time you smoke, may possibly be discouraged from smoking.”

Fifty-three-year-old ex-smoker Charles Southwood says he was hooked on cigarettes from age 13 to 40. Three years ago, while sitting in a Paris cafe, he was doodling on a package of British cigarettes and came up with the skull and crossbones motif.

Although he had no experience manufacturing or distributing products, he liked the ultra-truth-in-advertising notion his drawing represented and decided to somehow take Death Cigarettes to market.

It has not been easy. He traveled to the South, where the major U.S. tobacco companies found his idea “antithetical to their interests.” He found a small tobacco company in Holland that was willing to manufacture his cigarettes, and he briefly took up smoking again to get the blend of tobaccos just right. (He claims his cigarettes are “smoother” than their competitors.)

But then he couldn’t find a cigarette distributor willing to move his product into stores. “I think they’re afraid of pressure from the major cigarette manufacturers,” he says.

So in February, Southwood moved to Los Angeles to start distributing his cigarettes himself. He set up an office on a 25-foot sailboat harbored in Marina del Rey, began living on another boat nearby and found his first retail supporters in the Hollywood area.

One of Southwood’s first customers was Bill Shire, the eccentric owner of the trendy Melrose Avenue shops Soap Plant and Wacko. Says Soap Plant manager Michel Chenelle, “Death Cigarettes are selling like hot cakes (at $3 a pack). We can’t keep them in stock. People’s first reaction is, ‘Is this a real cigarette?’ The second is, ‘I think I’ll buy some for my friend who smokes to get the message through to them.’ I’d say only one in five people buys them for him or herself.”

Southwood has found that two distinctly different types of smokers are buying Death Cigarettes for themselves: those who want to scare themselves into quitting and those who have no intention of giving up their addiction but appreciate straight-forward advertising.

About 3,000 cartons have been sold, he says, chiefly at liquor stores, mini-marts and gift shops in the Hollywood, West Los Angeles, Venice and South Bay areas. But Southwood is ready for expansion. He’s applied for a trademark on a menthol cigarette.

The name? “Green Death.”