Ciggy Trek BPN.

Ciggies, and other drugs, are a damn fine way of getting money out of the poor. Addictive chemicals usurp the hierarchy of needs that was mentioned earlier - most addicts will prefer to feed the monkey than themselves. The evidence for this in Australia is the increase in use of charities by the urban poor since the government levied an extra 18.9 cents a ciggie in excise. Rather than give up smoking (the intent of the increase), poor addicts turn to others for food, clothing and shelter while continuing to supply their addiction.

40u a week is not a lot of spending money, but then there are so very many dole-recipients. It's like panning for alluvial gold rather than digging out a seam of the stuff.

By selling recipients an addictive product SLA Industries guarantees they will remain customers - no matter how badly they're paid. And when they turn to crime to supplement their income, you get the whole SLA Ops industry coming down on them, creating even more jobs and entertainment.

I think in WOPASS ciggies have all the addictive properties of RT tobacco but few or none of the health-depleting ones - it makes sense not to kill off your customers or add a burden of health care to the cost of their upkeep.

Here's a BPN:

Colour: Blue
SCL: 10
Contact: 'Cyool Stix' (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Department of Services)
Training package: Death Squad
CBS: 250c per operative
Monitoring: Station

Blurb: Restock Sector 618 Level 23 Cyool Stix vending machine.

Actual task: The Squad will be retained to transport a 200kg armoured plastic box down to 618/23, fending off nicotine-starved locals, local gangs and black marketeers, DN hoodlums and the consequences of smoking DN ciggies. Not to mention the prospect of making a tidy profit (more than the BPN is worth) if they were to 'lose' the package and sell it to the black market.

Usual bonuses apply, and 3ird Eye may pay well for footage of 50 clove-crazed jazz musicians charging into a line of power-claymores and FENs (see below).

Notes: IA discovered recently that the Cyool Stix / Dept Service SCL 11 drones who were supposed to be handling this as part of their routine were actually selling the product to the black market rather than traipsing all the way down to Level 23. The Sector/Level has been without ciggies for about a week now, with certain consequences:

1. Violent crime in the S/L has skyrocketed.
2. Violent crime in surrounding S/Ls is also on the way up, as desperate 618/23ers strike out to buy ciggies from their neighbours. These neighbours would prefer to keep their own ciggie machines for themselves lest the shortage widen, and it comes to blows.
3. DN have heard about the ciggie shortage and are planning a media coup based on Slayer's 'inability to provide basic supplies'. They may even sell ciggies of their own, laced with psychotropic toys of whatever kind your WOP needs more of... (I'd make these smell like those clove ciggies and cause users to go jazz and serial killer, but that's just me and my thing about beebop...)

The box is designed to slide as one piece into the vending machine. As the box is depleted, its memory-plastic shell contracts down to small cube which is removed by the servicer.

The machine collects unis and sends them via a heavily-protected and buried pneumatic system to a central repository around Level 5. The machine dispenses ciggies individually, or in gaudy shrink-wrapped packs of 5 or 10.

The vending machine itself is heavily armoured, and as it's the source of ciggies for the local Shivers as well as everybody else, relatively well guarded round the clock.