Nunes said he was not aware that the new law covers casinos, but the Ministry of Health confirmed it. That makes Nunes one of the first to break the new law that his agency is supposed to enforce!

The cigar maker’s candidate: Rudy Giuliani
Beth Reinhard’s lengthy story in the Miami Herald about Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and his close ties to the Florida cigar community starts with a story:

“In the spring of 1996, during a nighttime tour of Jerusalem’s old quarter, then-mayor Ehud Olmert offered Rudy Giuliani a Cuban cigar.

“Giuliani’s aide, a Cuban Jew whose family had escaped Fidel Castro’s communist government, grabbed the Dunhill from Olmert’s lips and demanded to know how he could support a repressive regime that had backed Palestinian terrorists.

“The next day, an apologetic Olmert presented a gift: a Dominican Dunhill.

“The New York City mayor had given up smoking. But in the story Giuliani tells, he started dreaming of cigars. He couldn’t resist any longer, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

The aide was a man named Manny Papir, who told the reporter that although the mayor had stopped smoking under pressure from ex-wife Donna Hanover, “As a Cuban, I was duty-bound and honor-committed to get him back on cigars.”

Giuliani has been a regular in and out of tobacco shops, factories and anywhere he can enjoy a cigar and talk to the store staff, customers and friends. The result? “He’s never been afraid to say he’s a cigar smoker, and that makes him a friend of ours,” said Camacho Cigars chief Christian Eiroa.

As a demonstration of his popularity with the cigar crowd, the Herald reported that a fund-raiser for Giuliani was held at the Coral Gables Biltmore last Thursday, co-hosted by Ernesto Perez-Carrillo of La Gloria Cubana fame and Orlando Padron, patriarch of the Padron brand.

However, Giuliani is not the only confirmed cigar smoker in the race.

Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson (also a Republican) is a long-time cigar lover and has admitted “chewing” on some cigars that are of “questionable origin,” meaning from Cuba. None of the Democratic primary candidates has admitted a love for cigars; Illinois senator Barack Obama says he is a reforming cigarette smoker.

Last one out turns off the light:
It’s almost unimaginable that a major city would not have a single independent tobacco shop. But that’s the situation now in Glasgow, Scotland.

“It is extremely difficult for independent shops to survive in a culture of anti-smoking, and the Scottish parliament has been particularly strong-minded about it,” said Don Higgins, secretary of the British Association of Independent Tobacco Specialists, in an interview with the Glasgow Sunday Herald. “It’s terribly, desperately sad that the last one has gone, because Glasgow had a special reputation in the tobacco trade.”

The last one standing was a 100-year-old shop named Herbert Love. It was more devoted to the pipe than the cigar and it’s been the pipe that has wilted most under the Scottish ban. “Pipe smoking is a placid, relaxing experience, but the image of the Volvo driver and carpet slippers is not appealing to young people these days,” said Higgins. “No one prominent is doing it, so pipe smokers are a dying breed.”

The loss of the last independent tobacconist in Glasgow is ironic, since the tobacco trade helped build the city. “There might be little physically left of what the first generation of tobacco merchants built, but their wealth was the driving force as Glasgow became a major city of the Industrial Revolution,” said historian Ronnie Scott. “In the space of 50 years, Glasgow went from a village to the second city of the empire.”

Does increasing cigarette taxes lower consumption?
The state of Maryland is about the find out whether increasing the per-pack tax on cigarettes by $1 (to $2 total) will actually help the state’s budget crunch.

The tax increase went into effect on New Year’s and for smokers in the relatively small state, surrounded by Pennsylvania to the north, West Virginia to the West, Virginia to the south and Delaware to the east, it’s fairly easy to find a cheaper state to shop in.

The clerk at a BP gas station in Ellersie, Maryland told the Cumberland Times-News that she expects sales to go down in Maryland. Asked if she thinks smokers will consider quitting because of the tax hike, she replied, “No, they’ll just go elsewhere.

“I’ve had several customers mention to me they’re going to West Virginia.” The per-pack tax there is 55 cents, compared to $1.35 in Pennsylvania. At $2 per pack, Maryland is now tied for the fourth-highest per-pack tax in the country behind only New Jersey ($2.575), Rhode Island ($2.46) and Washington ($2.03).
~ Rich Perelman

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

---