CHUFF CHUFF, PUFF PUFF

By RICHARD CORLISS

METROPOLITAN SMOKERS ARE A FORlorn lot these days. As more cities ban cigarettes in public places, smokers are altering every daily habit but the one they most crave. They take lunch at the restaurant bar because only there can they enjoy a quick stick of nicotine for dessert. They dash from their seats at the football stadium to the rest-room, missing the play of the day for the puff of the moment. Shivering in shirtsleeves outside their office complexes, they increase the risk that they will succumb not to emphysema but to chilblains.

They have to get away, and Philip Morris has the ticket. To Marlboro Country.

This August the Marlboro Unlimited--a multimillion-dollar, 20-car, specially built train sporting high glass-domed passenger cars, a cinema, a dance club, hot tubs, staterooms with private baths and, everywhere, the Marlboro logo--embarks from Denver for the first of 20 five-day treks through the West. One hundred winners of a sweepstakes drawing, who must testify they are smokers over 21, will be flown to the train with their guests and receive $1,000 mad money. They will take side trips on horseback, white-water raft and hot-air balloon. They will see private shows by country singers and rodeo stars and savor a guilty pleasure few trains now offer: smoking catarrhs--sorry, smoking cars--galore. There will also be a few smoke-free areas.

It has been the aim of the Clinton Administration to demonize smoking; last week the Federal Trade Commission hinted at a crackdown on the often fanciful tar and nicotine levels printed on cigarette packs. Through it all, though, one franchise stays strong: Marlboro. The brand accounts for 30% of the world cigarette market. It also anchors a lucrative mail business peddling burly outdoor gear--pocket knives, flashlights, Weber grills and every form of jacket--with the familiar logo. "If we were a mail-order company like L.L. Bean," says Ellen Merlo, a Philip Morris executive, "we'd be the third largest in the country."

The Marlboro Unlimited is a clever strategy to secure the brand's image in a time hostile to cigarette advertising. "We are always looking for innovative and proprietary ways to dimensionalize Marlboro Country," says Nancy Lund, vice president of Marlboro and a true poet of corporate-speak. "The Unlimited is a marriage of several concepts." In other words, the promotion sells cigarettes, it flogs merchandise, and it allows the target audience to smoke more while annoying nonsmokers a little less.

But not a lot less. "This campaign is associating Marlboro with exactly the type of rigorous activity that most appeals to adolescents," asserts Matt Myers, counsel to the Coalition on Smoking and Health, who first saw the train ads in his 13-year-old son's copy of Sports Illustrated. "It is another trick to make smoking the way teenage boys assert their independence and proclaim their masculinity. And it's another reason why restrictions should be placed on tobacco advertising and marketing."

But that's for later. For now, clean-air crusaders with an impish streak must be plotting how to sneak onto the train. Prepare for toxic outbursts ("You lungers are on the last train to Boot Hill!") before the miscreants are tied up and tossed into a ditch. Oh, maybe the Marlboro Unlimited won't be that exciting, but cigarette fanciers will surely prefer a Rocky Mountain nicotine high to sneakin' off and smokin' in the boys' room back home.

--By Richard Corliss. Reported by Stacy Perman/New York

With reporting by Stacy Perman/New York