Some excellent news indeed, with impacts reaching much further than the U.S. borders. But Gecko is right, this is just one battle in the war, and it's a slippery slope indeed - with a definite flipside.
Of course, if they put a goodly amount of Latakia and Perique into the cigs, I'm guessing we would see a sharp decline in new cig smokers.
Off the top of my head:
Latakia Cigarettes: Old Gold; Drum Black; several "boutique" RYO blends
Perique: American Spirit Perique
Izmir: Camel Exotic
I'm sure there are a few others, but they certainly have (and do) use the condimental tobaccos in cigarettes. In fact, it's pretty well documented that if American Spirit hadn't started producing a cigarette blend featuring Perique, we wouldn't have the fermented leaf today.
I think this can be taken a step further, however. True pipe-smokers make up a miniscule fraction of the tobacco market. If cigarette companies didn't buy thousands of tons of leaf a year, do you think that we would continue to see the plethora of raw leaf available for small (in comparison to say, Phillip Morris) blending houses like McClelland or Cornell and Diehl? And what leaf was on the market would have a higher value, as tobacco farming would become even less widespread than currently, driving up the prices on blends while ensuring lesser variety available to the consumer.
Rather than villify the cigarette, we do need to recognize that our relationship with the manufacturer must be symbiotic in order to continue as things are.
