Lorillard started the trend with their Kent cigarette.

He led a $15 million dollar ad campaign for Kent cigarettes.

It was an economy so wrecked that the real currency was carefully preserved packs of Kent cigarettes businessmen would bring here as tips and bribes.

Thomas James, executive vice president and director of account services, illustrated those points with the agency's campaign for Lorillard's Kent cigarettes.

According to local legend, this is how Kent cigarettes rather than any other brand became the currency of the black market in Romania.

(Lorillard's Kent cigarette also has 13, but the brand has only a market share of 2.1 percent, and it is falling).

With capital so scarce, barter became the norm, and packs of Kent cigarettes from the United States achieved the status of an alternative currency.

Their suitcases had been seized by the hall porter and an ageing bell-boy, both avid for Kent cigarettes.

From March 1952 until at least May 1956, however, the Micronite filter in Kent cigarettes contained carcinogenic blue asbestos.

Kent cigarettes come in the following varieties: