Ciggy wiggy dillies

My parents and I stopped at the 7 Eleven on the way home from dinner tonight (there really is nothing like a weekend trip home to make me feel 12 again). My dad ran inside to get milk while my mom and I waited in the car. She fiddled with the radio while I stared out the window at the townies who hang out in front of the store smoking and eating donuts. I recognized an older boy I used to have a massive crush on when I was in 6th grade and silently thanked God for not ever hooking that up.

Among the signs advertising scratch-n-win tickets and Big Gulps, I noticed something that I'd never seen before. Because dorking it up is what I do best, I ran out of the car and took a picture of it with my cell phone (yeah, that's my dad standing at the register in the background).
Apparently, the minimum age to purchase cigarettes in New Jersey has been raised to 19. The change was signed into law in January and is effective today. Obviously I hadn't heard anything about it because a) I live in DC, b) I am well above the statutory age, and c) I gave up smoking for lent (just a couple hours left...). Although I imagine this is just the kind of story that the local news stations have been all over for the past week.

I really doubt that this law will change anything. The proceeds that stores such as this one make from selling cigarettes to minors far outweigh the occasional fines. And I know for a fact that this particular 7 Eleven never cards as I have been buying Marlboro Lights from them since I was 16. There always used to be those urban legends(?) about police officers hiring underage kids to go into stores and buy cigarettes so that they could bust them. I never actually met anyone who did this, but we always used to hear about it. I did a bit of googling when I got home to see if I could find out anything else about this new law and instead came across a Cigarette wiki that included this intriguing list of "slang terms for cigarettes," most of which I've never even heard of:

"Cigarettes have accumulated a variety of nicknames such as "smokes", "butt","square" (from the shape of the box), "cigs", "ciggies", "stogs", "stogies", "stokes", "lamps", "snouts", "tabs" (especially in NE England), "loosey" (a single cigarette), "backwards", "bogeys", "boges", "gorts", "ciggy wiggy dilly's", "darts","refries" (already used cigarettes being relit and smoked), "straights" (for factory rolled ones), "dugans" (especially in NYC), "hairy rags", "squares", "bad boy", "hausersticks", "jacks", "joes" (taken from the "Camel Joe", an old Camel Cigarettes mascot), "grits", "grants" (A common phrase used for asking someone for a cigarette is "Can you grant me a grant?")..."

I think once Lent ends I'm going to have to start incorporating some of these terms into my lexicon. I especially like that "grant me a grant" bit. It sounds so film noir-esque...as in, "Grant me a grant, ya big lug."