Britain gave off a funny aroma, equal parts cigarette smoke, overcooked vegetables and what connoisseurs of aftershave knew as "the great smell of Brut".
There are false watches, football kit, car parts, cigarettes, sunglasses and banknotes - and even Roman fakes, in the form of counterfeit amphorae stoppers.
"Ohh… Auto parts, cigarettes, gold Krugerrands, books, synthetic diamonds, Russian caviar… You could sell them in West Berlin for 10 times the price, but I was doing it almost not for profit!
This placed the ministry in the awkward position of depending, in part, on cigarette sales for its funding.
Companies like Abbott Laboratories and Targacept, which was once part of cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds, are in early testing of drugs designed to bind to some of the same receptors in the body as nicotine but not be addictive.
"I thought nicotine was the dangerous part of cigarettes," he says.
We pointed out that the guy couldn't lose parts in cigarette commercials by appearing in an anti-smoking spot, because he didn't even smoke.
"It was hard to get actors for this sort of thing, because they were afraid they might have to give up the lucrative fees and residuals that the tobacco companies pay for parts in cigarette commercials," he said.
When Neal Stewart, an Australian tech pioneer who had been advising Maven for years, approached her in 2001 about commercializing a way to sort the cancer-causing parts of cigarette smoke from the rest of it, she was revolted.
The adolescent questionnaire included the questions "Have you ever smoked even part of a cigarette?" and "Have you smoked cigarettes in the past 12 months?" and several questions covering the number of cigarettes smoked in the past week.
