That's possible. Several years ago, we got some Kensington lock security cables for securing LCD monitors in an open area, and you could smell them before we even finished cutting open the blister packs. I'm pretty sure they were made of pure poo and assembled in a sewer by people who had no sense of smell. We tried washing them and leaving them to "air out" for a few weeks in a storage room, but nothing helped. The last time I saw them, they still smelled as wretchedly awful as the day we opened the packages.
Now, my sister had pretty good luck with, IIRC, Ozium (several cans of it) for getting the smoker stench out of a car back in the day (my dad got a hell of a deal on it because the original owner had been a chain smoker and it really and for truly reeked of stale cigarette smoke), but I'm not sure if it would help in this case.
