'The future of nicotine addiction'

Oh, those cuddly tobacco companies - what with their conscientious worldviews, and their loving, warm embrace of humanity's potential, its future:

Their latest idea is a shorter, more potent smoke that will dose you faster and get you back inside to work. What a concept: quicker addiction for greater productivity.

The new cigarette is Marlboro Intense. The chief executive of Philip Morris International was proudly smoking one of them for a Wall Street Journal story this week about its new products and strategies. Right now, it's available in Turkey, but don't be surprised if it turns up in this country too.

In the United States, Philip Morris tries to portray itself as a responsible company that will somehow both sell you cigarettes and help you quit smoking. At the same time, however, it is spinning off Philip Morris International as a separate company from the parent Altria Group, to gain more flexibility in lucrative, wide-open foreign markets. The future of nicotine addiction is in countries such as China and Indonesia. In that island nation, they sell Marlboro Mix 9, a flavored cigarette with double the normal jolt of the drug.

D'oh!