Dude, the government lets cigarettes be legal even though they kill like thousands of people. But weed is illegal. And now, dude, cloves are illegal. Cloves! The taste proves they're not killing you! Clove-smoking hippies are fighting back. With cloves!

See, the government outlawed flavored cigarettes, so Kretek, which makes all the cloves you smoke, is now selling clove cigars. Problem solved!

Lake Isabella, Calif., resident Terry Day, 42 years old, used to drive 240 miles round-trip to buy clove cigarettes when he lived in rural Valentine, Neb. He said he might try the cigars but was dubious about whether he would like them.

That is even farther than most heroin addicts are willing to drive. Fun fact(?) about the origin of the healing powers of cloves:

Studebacher Hoch, a resident of Kudus, Java, created kreteks in the early 1880s as a means to deliver the medicinal eugenol of cloves to the lungs, as it was thought to help asthma. It cured his chest pains and he started to market his invention to the village, but he died of lung cancer before he could mass market it.

[Pic: AP]