Issues Setting Global $PATH when using LXDE

[mwbuda]

I am setting up a development VM for work on a new project; and am having trouble altering the global $PATH.

_What I am Trying to Do:_
I am trying to alter the global $PATH from
"/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games"
to
"/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin/var/opt/run"

_Why I am Trying to Do It:_
since this is a work VM, we don't need games in the path;
/var/opt I am using as the root to manually install our dev software;

I wanted to avoid using apt to download this because a lot of what we want is not latest version; and I did not want to mess around with adding custom apt sources.
It is much easier to manually install/unpack-from-tars the stuff I need, and get it on the global path

_What I Have Already Tried:_
1st:
per the information here https://wiki.debian.org/EnvironmentVariables I edited /etc/profile to use the altered path.
if I `source /etc/profile` in a terminal everything works as expected, but this doesn't apply at system start like I need it to.

2nd:
I have also tried login.def; again it doesn't have the right paths on system start;

3rd:
added a definition to the (prev. empty) /etc/environment. same result

I found this link here:
http://ljwo.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/gl ... eezy-xfce/
which seems like it (or something like it) may be the problem, but the provided solution doesn't help me b/c I am using LXDE, not XFCE.
I understand I can fix the stupid done by LightDM (assuming LightDM is the culprit) with a script run at end of boot/init; but I am not sure where to put that script.

Can Anyone help me get the global $PATH set properly?
Thanks!