NASCAR Must Make America Hot Again By Returning Cigarette Ads To Race Cars

NASCAR is, for better or worse, a tastemaker in these United States. The sport is reintroducing nicotine sponsors in the form of chewing tobacco brands, as a way for both NASCAR and Big Tobacco to go after younger audiences, but I think it doesn't go far enough. NASCAR has an opportunity — nay, a patriotic duty — to put cigarette sponsors back on its cars, tracks, and championships. 

It's no secret that we're living in what future historians are likely to call the American Century of Humiliation. This is due in part to the protectionist trade wars, the war on bodily autonomy, and the general imperialist boomerang, but there's more to it than that. Our American youths are international dweebs when it comes to nicotine, getting popcorn lung from sucking on cotton candy-flavored disposable gas station vapes or spitting their chewed-up stank juice into any number of nearby Monster cans, while Europeans still look hot in the soft, warm glow of a cigarette. NASCAR, we must not allow a nicotine hotness gap!

When you picture a vape user, what do you imagine? Likely some WRX owner, blasting fat clouds while blown-out speakers struggle to keep up with bass-boosted hyperpop. A nicotine pouch user is some pretend "good-old-boy" with a Montessori education and a $100,000 truck for Costco runs. Contrast those images to the mysterious cigarette smoker, in a leather jacket outside a dive bar, face bathed in the warm glow of embers. We cannot lose our cultural cachet to the French! This is an existential battle!

Despite cigarette sponsor bans on a product that, you know, actively kill people, Americans are still into nicotine. NASCAR has a patriotic duty to ensure that those Americans are getting their nic buzz in the sexiest form possible. Think back to the Marlboro and Camel liveries of old, the sight of drivers blasting cigs in the paddock before a race. Even fans at home, slumped in recliners surrounded by cans of Coors Light, look better with a Pall Mall than with lips full of dip. If we really want to beat back the American Century of Humiliation, we'll have to do it with good old-fashioned American Spirit(s).