Black Market Cigarettes

In Tahiti

Papeete, Aug. 9.

mHE broadcasters in the United States J. used to pother and vex the air waves with shrill inquiries as to the whereabouts of the millions of cigarettes that were pouring ceaselessly from the factories of the Tobacco Trust. A little less noise and a measure of intelligent investigation would have revealed one oi the most efficiently conducted black mar kets this war period has produced This was brought to general attention in this Colony by the operations of the smuggling ring, which was under judicial investigation some time ago.

Here there was always an ample supply of cigarettes—at a price—the price the black market ghouls demanded.

It is an ill wind that blows no good for someone. The detection of one band of smugglers eliminated a series of orgies around the wassail-bowl in Papeete which had periodically murdered sleep throughout the district.

There is no need for our Tahitians to become victims of the black market.

There is native tobacco in abundance.

The old type of cigarette—made by twist ing a leaf of native tobacco with paper thin rau-oro (the dried leaf of a species of pandanus)—has a flavour far superior to that of the processed corn-site and North Carolina marsh-grass which mas querade as tobacco in many American tourists of the notorious 1920 de cade introduced the American cigarettes.

Bv an evolution of snobbery, the smoking of the fragrant rau-oro variety became plebeian. The Tahitian was thus made ripe for exploitation.