Welcome to the section of our web site that deals with the “GENERIC factor” in the tobacco industry.

Around the early 1970’s, the tobacco industry pulled a nifty “trick” on the American people and, to a lesser degree, their legislators.

GENERIC Pricing was introduced.

The premise behind “GENERIC” Pricing was that the tobacco companies were allowed to introduce an entirely new category of cigarettes into the marketplace which were promised to be “plain” cigarettes in “plain, non-descript” wrappers supported by “little to no” mass advertising with strict “no returns” and “low to no maintenance” in-store policies in exchange for a lower price tier.

The actual  premise behind this lower price tier and across the board size (King, 100MM), flavor (menthol, non-menthol) and Tar & Nicotine (low tar, full flavor) CATEGORY was, simply, the perfect means by the tobacco industry to entrap by means of PRICE, children, minorities, the elderly and people in lower income brackets and making cigarettes affordable to them.

And “in-store” maintenance (code date rotation, stale product removal & exchanges), in reality, is and always was a “high priority” for the tobacco companies and always will be, believe me.

Despite whatever they may say otherwise, if you look at the facts you will discover that all of the tobacco companies market their “Generic” brands and have advertising budgets for their “Generic” brands that exceed most of their “Flagship” brands sales campaigns and ad budgets.

This section will endeavor to illustrate, in part using tobacco company documents, just how massive, expensive and well-maintained the marketing of these GENERIC brands are and have been for almost 30 years in direct contradiction to what these tobacco companies were supposed to do in regards to “minimal” marketing and “little to no” maintenance.

The only real “beneficiaries” to the massive ad budgets and ad campaigns of “Generic” cigarettes are children, the elderly, minorities and the lower income bracket.

GENERIC PRICING was a “trick” pulled on the American people by the tobacco companies that they got away with.

Period.

Take Generic Pricing away; take Generic Pricing out of the tobacco product consumption/sales equation all together and the tobacco product sales figures will  plummet … literally overnight.

Period.