I don’t smoke but I was waiting in line and was bored and looking at all the different types.
There are filtered, unfiltered, 100s, lights, ultra lights, slims, menthol all different kinds.
So what is the difference between the types? Other than a personal preference.
And no, I’m not gonna start smoking, I was just wondering…
Unfiltered:exactly what it says on the packet, no filter
Filtered: exactly what it says on the packet, a filter
100s: a longer cigarette
Lights: light in taste and not as harsh on your lungs, this can be debated scientifically whether they are indeed healthier but trust me they FEEL better for you.
Ultra lights: see above, same deal only lighter.
Slims: skinny cigarettes
Menthol: nice cooling sensation, like smoking mint leaves. Its a matter of taste, some hate them.
Have you really never smoked a single cigarette in your life :dubious: I’m not a daily smoker but even I’ve tried them.
It is hardly something uncommon for someone to have never smoked a cigarette nowadays.
Nope, I’ve never smoked anything. Not even “not inhaling.” 
I have coffee, especially Starbucks as my vice
There are also 120s, which are even longer than 100s. Cigarette holders were in fashion for a while, until the tobacco manufacturers started including filters in the cigarettes. For at least a while, Camel cigarettes came out in a wide pack, which was a pack of 25 cigs instead of 20. Smokers enjoyed having the “bonus” cigarettes, and being able to claim to only smoke one pack a day when they actually smoked more than one pack. From what I understood, in at least some states cigarettes are taxed in increments of 20…so a wide pack would have been taxed the same as two regular packs. Since cigarettes are taxed at a pretty high rate, that makes wide packs a fairly expensive choice. In addition to menthol, when I was growing up there was at least one lemon flavored cigarette.
Unfiltered cigarettes have about the same length of tobacco filled paper tube as filtered, but the filtered kind also have a filter with a paper wrap on it, so they look longer.
Most of the various differences are just marketing, the tobacco companies want smokers to feel a sense of attachment to their particular brands.
There’s also roll-your-own, which is what rolling papers are SUPPOSED to be used for. You can do this by hand or buy a machine to roll them for you. I don’t know if you can get filters to put in roll-your-owns.
When I was in my mid teens, I thought that smoking was incredibly glamorous and cool and adventurous and rebellious. I grew out of that when I was about 17 or so.
Regarding cigarette lengths and sizes, there are (or were when I smoked) subsizes beneath the 100s: “king size” was slightly longer than normal, but under 100mm. A lot of males would eschew 100s, and even more eschewed 120s, as they saw them as feminine. Somehow. (Looking it up on Wikipedia, I see that 120s were introduced in the 1970 and targeted both men and women, but marketing became directed primarily toward women, so I guess that’s the explanation…) I never understood it, and never got any flak myself for being a male who smoked Newport 100s, but if most men’s regular brands were out in regular/king, they would usually refuse to buy the longer variants, going to another store (and usually bumming a 100 off of me on the way. :rolleyes:), and I noticed women who smoked 100/120 would refuse to go shorter.
Slims and ultra slims were designed and marketed specifically from the start as a women’s cigarette (Virginia Slims, Misty, Eve, Capri); these are usually 120s, and thin or very fin compared to a normal cigarette. A guy would sometimes reluctantly bum one off of a slims smoker if he had nothing on smoke break, but I think I only once met a guy who actively bought them for himself. There are also “wides,” unrelated to the wide packs mentioned by Lynn Bodoni, that are the antithesis of slims: they’re shorter than normal cigarettes and wider in diameter. I really only ever saw wides in the Camel brand, but a lot of Camel smokers really liked them.
There’re also “hard pack” and “soft pack” variants for which people have very strong preferences. Hard packs (or “boxes”) are paperboard flip-top/slide-open/clamshell packages with a bit of structural rigidity that keeps the cigarettes from becoming bent or crushed when kept in a pocket or purse. Soft packs are paper/foil packets that can be less uncomfortable when kept in a shirt pocket, and are flexible enough to allow a lighter or pack of matches to be slipped between the cellophane wrapper and the packet. Again, hardcore fans of one style will often refuse to buy the other. I seem to recall that some brands had small length differences between their hard and soft packs, but after 13 years of not smoking, I don’t remember if this is true or some confusion I had regarding Camel hard packs and Camel wides soft packs.
I tried smoking a few times but wound up choking. I can’t see how anyone can smoke. That said, what difference does the filter make? I guess it’s suppose to trap the tar, but allow you the nicotine? Does the length make any difference?
I was thinking if it’s longer it’s more tightly packed. Or is it more loosely packed. So would that make it so you have to suck on it harder?
I thought I read that minorities smoke more menthol than other cigarettes? Is the cool sensation like when you suck a mint? Or is it more of a flavor? Which leads me to ask, do they make chocolate? 
Actually, Camel Wides (still available, I notice) come 20 to a pack, just like regular Camels. They’re fatter, though. More tobacco stuffed in them. Back when I was a smoker I’d get them once in a while; I always thought of them as ‘cartoon cigarettes’.
Marlboro used to market ‘Marlboro 25s’, with 25 to a pack. But I don’t think the tax rate was any different.
Health concerns and price drove me to quit; here in New York a pack costs about ten bucks.
And our Canadian friends will tell us that in Ontario, not only is cigarette advertising is banned, the stores that sell them aren’t even allowed to display the damned things!
Why is that hard to believe? I never tried one either. I never saw the point of sucking on a cancer stick.
Count me in as someone who has never so much as even taken a single drag from a cigarette. Nothing surprising about that!
You can only put a certain amount of tobacco (by weight) in a cigarette before it gets classified as a “Class B” cigarette. That’s why they don’t make regular diameter 120s. Class B cigarettes would be taxed at a higher rate (hypothetically, I don’t know that any were ever made).
From link
“We thought: boy, this sounds like an extremely useful classification system. What other nonexistent cigarettes can we dream up categories for? Concrete cigarettes! Electrical cigarettes! Cigarettes with stainless steel linings!”
Probably seemed unlikely in 1977.
I must be misremembering. My husband used to smoke Marlboro reds hardpack, then he switched to Marlboro lights (again, hard pack). I never really smoked on a regular basis, I bought a few packs from the vending machines (remember those?) that were put in just about every restaurant that allowed vending machines at all. My main experience with cigarettes was selling them in a convenience store, where a lot of smokers were very picky about which kind they wanted, and they’d get pissed if the clerk didn’t remember EXACTLY what kind they liked (don’t offer a soft pack to a guy who wants a hard pack, for instance).
A smoker who is bumming a cigarette will reluctantly accept a style that’s not his or her preference, as it’s better than no cigarette at all. Some people use this as a method to discourage the smokers who will habitually bum cigs from other people…that is, offer the bum a menthol 120 in place of the Camel unfiltered that the bum prefers.
I’ve smoked menthol, and it does taste like mint. I found that it seemed much less harsh than regular cigarettes (though this was a lie) and so it was easier for a wannabe smoker to smoke.
And the cost of cigarettes is absolutely astronomical.
My father used to smoke, and he said that every evening, he’d have to make sure that he had enough cigarettes to last through the evening, until he could buy more at the store, and also matches. He quit smoking in the early 60s.
I think there used to be more brands–many years ago I worked in a sort of convenience store, and there were about a zillion brands, and as someone said, god help you if you were out of a smoker’s particular brand. There were also people who didn’t like if you didn’t know exactly where it was or if you didn’t remember what they’d gotten before. (I almost always remembered, but I don’t want to presume, they might have changed their mind.)
Also, whenever you got the order of the various brands memorized, somebody on another shift would come in and rearrange everything so when you went for Marlboros you would instead grab a pack of Winstons, and they were the same color (red). This was always a mistake. Someone who wanted Winstons would not usually settle for Marlboros and vice versa.
Nowadays it seems like every brand has at least six varieties–light, ultralight, long, short, menthol, menthol ultralight–but I don’t think there are as many brands as there used to be. Not that I spend a lot of time perusing cigarette displays, but I don’t think I’ve seen a pack of Tareytons or Larks in a long time.
Yes, you can buy pre-rolled cigarette tubes with filters to roll your own filtered cigarettes. I won’t link to any, but you can find them on Google.
Add me to the list.
Thanks this is interesting. Just out of curiosity, what makes a person like a particular brand? Is it the taste, or do you think it’s a difference in the amount of nicotine.
I was reading online and it says different tabaccos can deliver different amounts of nicotine.
people can like their brand so much they would rather fight than switch.
If you don’t smoke and you realize cigarettes are very bad for your health, then there’s nothing else you need to know.
You aren’t curious about them though.
Actually I think unless you have health problems or a opposition to smoking in general it is good to try tobacco at least once. It helps dispel the notion that its worth a damn.
Its probably different for each smoker, nicotine levels differing is not something you would notice unless you get into serious chain smoking(I remember a 2 pack a day smoker complaining that lights were not giving them the dose they wanted).
For most serious smokers the brand they prefer is a matter of psychology(what they started with etc) or what they can afford. For occasional smokers money isn’t an issue so they go more for taste, I’d sometimes buy a pack of a brand I never tried just to see what it was like. I ended up giving a lot away 