Notes & Queries 6th November, 2013 - When did James Bond stop smoking?

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James Bond's unsuccessful attempt at giving up cigarettes forms a minor plot point in Patrick Redinger's short story – A Matter of Proportion. As a rule the character either smokes, or does not smoke, according to the whims of his handler. At the time of writing this is the author John Evoy (a pro-smoker), thought to be a pseudonym of Douglas Maskey, who is better known for his historical epics set against a backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.

As a thought experiment, let us imagine for a moment that we have managed to drug the fictional James Bond, perhaps using a dart coated with a rare South American poison, fired from the tip of a customised umbrella; the kind that is only sold by a small family-run shop in Kiev. Let us assume that, having rendered this version of Bond unconscious, we have the power to set in motion the most extraordinary of all extraordinary renditions, removing him from the pages of the novels that bear his name and transplanting him into the real world:

It is a reality very different from the one Bond is used to – a world where parents do not burden their female children with christian/surname combinations that serve dual purpose as thinly-veiled sexual innuendos, subjecting their daughters to years of teasing and ensuing low self-esteem that eventually drives them into the arms of megalomaniac, criminal masterminds. In this world, Bond's eyebrow is likely to remain un-arched. Comments about Miss Moneypenny being cheap at half the price will result in meetings with the MI6 branch of Human Resources to discuss sexism in the workplace. Fountain pens seldom double as radio transmitters or one-shot pistols, and large tanks of piranhas are found only in public aquariums. Adding insult to injury, Bond would have been required by his employers to stop smoking on the 1st January 1987, were he still in active service. Furthermore, he would have been obliged to exercise regularly and supplement his diet with plenty of leafy green vegetables. A vodka Martini, while still an option, would only be an occasional pleasure. Acts of murder, either at home or on foreign soil, would no longer be encouraged. Bond would be a much healthier government-sanctioned psychopath, but not necessarily a happier one.

According to the memoir of a former spy, ‘Robert Jones’, this dreadful state of affairs (I am imaging the situation from Bond's point of view) came about as a direct result of the deaths of three MI6 field operatives, within weeks of each other, during the last three months of 1986. All of the operatives in question succumbed to smoking-related illnesses – two from congestive heart failure and the other from lung cancer. Postmortems revealed no evidence of any foul play and the closeness of these very similar deaths was put down to an unhappy coincidence. The enigmatic Jones claims the repercussions resulting from the loss of these agents are still felt to this day, but does not elaborate.

On New Years Day of 1987, MI6 instructed all of its agents to stop smoking with immediate effect, with special exemption being granted in a handful of cases where doing so would draw undue attention and place embedded agents under suspicion. Prior to this, MI6 operatives typically smoked cigarettes produced by a shell company called Falcon Tobacco, which was later taken over by another sham company called Jade Kingdom. Both companies were allegedly owned and operated by MI6. Falcon and Jade Kingdom produced cigarettes that were sold worldwide under a variety of different brand-names (Willow Wand, Golem, West Sahara Wind, and North Sahara Wind were the most popular). Many of these brands advertised in motor racing, prior to the tobacco ban, and effectively helped to subsidise the sport at all levels.

The Jade Kingdom tobacco plantation, which is located in the Bihar Province of northern India, still exists and is managed by an order of monks. It no longer has any ties with MI6, although it is not known when, or under what circumstances, this parting of the ways occurred. In addition to tobacco, Jade Kingdom cigarettes were fortified with herbs, among them Quabur, which is a mild amphetamine that raises levels of alertness and concentration, and improves night vision. For these reasons it is widely used by Indian truck drivers.

One thing that was not known until quite recently was that, by making a series of small incisions along the barrel of a Jade Falcon cigarette, it was possible to send sophisticated smoke signals that functioned very much like a short range Morse code, allowing line of sight communication between agents.