NASCAR needs to make America hot again by sending cigarette ads back to race cars – Jalopnik

For better or worse, NASCAR is a trendsetter in these United States. The sport is reintroducing nicotine sponsors in the form of chewing tobacco brandsas a way for both NASCAR and Big Tobacco to reach a younger audience, but I don’t think it goes far enough. NASCAR has an opportunity — no, it’s a patriotic duty — to put cigarette sponsors back on its cars, tracks and championships.

It’s no secret that we are living in what future historians will likely call the American Century of Humiliation. This is partly due to the protectionist trade wars, the war on bodily autonomy and the general imperialist boomerang, but there is more going on. Our American youth are international suckers when it comes to nicotine, getting popcorn lungs from sucking on disposable cotton candy flavored gas station vapes or spitting their chewed up, smelly juice into some nearby Monster cans, while Europeans still look warm in the soft, warm glow of a cigarette. NASCAR, we can’t allow a nicotine hotness gap!

Despite cigarette sponsors’ ban on a product that actively kills people, Americans still love nicotine. NASCAR has a patriotic duty to make sure those Americans get their fun buzz in the sexiest form possible. Think back to the Marlboro and Camel colors of yesteryear, the sight of drivers blowing cigarettes in the paddock before a race. Even fans at home, slumped in armchairs surrounded by cans of Coors Light, look better with a Pall Mall than with lips full of dip. If we really want to reverse the American Century of Humiliation, we will have to do it with old-fashioned American spirit(s).