It’s available at Cigar Register, a project more of passion than profit for creator Peter Agardi. He wanted to create a cigar community where people could read each other’s reviews, keep tabs on their own collections and create wish lists so when they find a cigar they think they want, they can check their list quickly to see if they should buy.

He has several thousand European and American smokers now using his online tool, which is a compact program at just 31Mb that can be downloaded quickly and easily. It also connects with a sister site, CigarTower.com, which offers ratings from readers and experts on hundreds of brands to give you a preview of a cigar you might be interested in.

It’s easy to use and unlike a written inventory, or a mis-named spreadsheet, you won’t lose it. The only danger is that you’ll spend too much time organizing your collection and checking out what others think of your favorites.

Top-spending anti-smoking state can’t stop new users:
A recent report in the Central Maine Morning Sentinel noted that Maine retained its position as the state spending the most on anti-tobacco programs. The state, which has only about 1.4 million people, spent $16.9 million or 7.4% of the $229 million it received from its share of the 1998 tobacco settlement agreement (MSA).

However, despite all of these efforts and the fact that cigarette company spending through the major public communications channels in the state – newspapers, magazines, radio and television – amount to essentially zero, 16.2% of high school students – about 1,900 – still took up smoking in 2007.

The anti-tobacco lobby will tell you that cigarette companies spent $66 million on marketing in the state, but almost all of that was simply discounts on price, much more likely to influence brand preference against non-name cigarettes than to extol the virtues of taking up smoking. What’s more telling is that smoking will never be wiped out short of Prohibition and the increasing problems of tobacco and cigarette smuggling in high-tax countries like Canada and Great Britain demonstrate that heading toward a total ban on tobacco is only a boon for organized crime.

Although under-age smoking is not to be applauded anywhere, the Maine figures are an interesting window into the reality of tobacco as a part of American life, no matter what the do-gooders – as with the Prohibition movement of the 1920s – will say.

To err is human, to forgive devine . . .
One of the most effective annual fund-raising programs for the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation, created by the Fuente and Newman families to support rural communities in the Dominican Republic, has been the annual Opus 22 collector’s edition (pictured above).