[beloch]

I'd appreciate the perspective of an actual smoker on this, but I suspect those long-preserved cigarettes aren't that special in and of themselves. For Steve, it's a hit of both nostalgia and a chemical he's long been deprived of. It's probably amazing for him, and that shows in the videos, but telling himself that those preserved cigs are special might be a way for him to avoid relapsing. He craves more, but he can tell himself that the modern junk just wouldn't be the same.

If you decided to get addicted to vintage MRE tobacco you'd probably have a pretty tough time sourcing enough of it to give yourself cancer.

[ssl-3]

Cigarettes haven't been the same (in the US) for well over a decade now, since all 50 States and DC require them to be "fire safe" cigarettes (FSC).

This means that there are parts of the paper wrapper that have vinyl compounds that are intended to allow them to self-extinguish.

Compared to the cigarettes of yore, these taste like fried dick cancer.

But old tobacco doesn't always age well. It can survive for centuries if stored at the appropriate temperature and humidity and away from things that would impact the taste, or it can turn stale and fairly blah in weeks or months when stored poorly.

[freedomben]

Interesting. I rarely smoke, but did do a lot of smoking in the mid 00s. I recently indulged and damn, it was nowhere near as tasty as I remember. That probably explains it!

[lazystar]

Where would one go to purchase specialty cigarettes, without those compounds?

[IAmGraydon]

Any tobacco shop. You can buy empty cigarette tubes, which are basically just the paper tube with a cotton filter attached. They don't contain any extra additive. You can then load any tobacco you like with a cigarette loading machine (also known as an "injector"). You can also buy pure, high quality Dutch tobacco that's far higher quality than anything that would have been loaded into a cigarette in the 1970s.

[christophilus]

For pipe smokers, there’s a formula called “Doc Watson” which includes cigarette tobacco. It’s excellent. You will get a nicotine biz from it unless you sip it.

[ssl-3]

Somewhere else in the world that isn't the US, I presume. They aren't here anymore.

(One can make them themselves, just as one can make anything else by oneself, but then one would not be purchasing them as completed items.)