Kent is a brand of cigarettes. Kent's Micronite filter was introduced shortly after the publication of a series of articles in Reader's Digest in 1952 entitled "Cancer by the Carton", that scared American consumers into seeking out a filter brand at a time when most brands were filterless. (Viceroy cigarettes had been the first to introduce filters, in 1936.)
From March 1952 until at least May 1956, however, the Micronite filter in Kent cigarettes contained carcinogenic blue asbestos. Kent now uses charcoal filters (a form of activated carbon).
The brand is the property of British American Tobacco Nassi group.
The brand is named after Herbert Kent, a former executive at Lorillard Tobacco Company.
Between 1970 and 1990 Kent was the most demanded cigarette im Romania and in some parts of the domestic market used as payment instrument and bribe. Kent was not buyable in legal shops but on black market (were brought by tourists, diplomats or other western visitors). Nobody knows why just Kent was much more in demand than all other western cigarette brands.
Famous quotes containing the word kent:
“Main Street was never the same. I read Gide and tried to
translate Proust. Now nothing is real except French wine.
For absurdity is reality, my loneliness unreal, my mind tired.
And I shall die an old Parisian.”
—Conrad Kent Rivers (1933–1968)