Chapter 7: The Anguish of the Russian Count Summary

By the end of the 1950s, cigarette trends had moved towards the safer cigarette. More than half of all sales were filtered, and huge inroads were being made by menthol and king types. Technological advances to reduce health risks also made profit margins greater. Filter material took up the space of more expensive tobacco, stronger leaf to make up for the filtering effect was cheaper than mild leaf, and porous paper allowed a cleaner burn while also making the cigarette burn quicker. Filters were not being analyzed for their effectiveness; the ones that filtered least (and provided the best flavor) seemed to be selling the best (like Winston, which quickly took the number one filtered spot). Marlboro also took off, with its 'manly' advertising campaign - its filtered product was at...