|
|
|
| THE FUTURE OF SMOKING: SCARY? |
|
|
|
Page 1 of 2  Plus: A new cigar designed to help Hondurans in needLos Angeles, October 31 – For some people, Halloween can sometimes get pretty scary. Today, there are plenty of cigar smokers who look at the future with concern as well. Is Prohibition coming? Not yet, but it’s getting closer. A crucial test for cigar lovers comes in less than two weeks when the Boston Public Health Commission will vote on new anti-smoking regulations which would eliminate smoking in many outdoor areas and would phase out, over five years, all cigar bars in the city. The tyranny of the anti-smoking movement has now reached the point where regulations are being adopted to eliminate smoking even in places – such as cigar bars – which are specifically set up for that purpose, do not allow admission to minors, and in which all persons present know that they will be in a smoking environment.. The four existing cigar bars and many of the cigar retailers in Boston are working diligently to defeat these regulations and have had some support from Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who also appointed the members of the Public Health Commission. The Cigar Rights of America organization has also been supporting the effort and is asking all smokers to call or write Menino: We urge you to call Boston's Mayor Thomas Menino at (617) 635-4500 and let him know that you are a cigar enthusiast and that you oppose the Boston Outdoor Smoking Ban and that adults should have the right to enjoy a cigar outdoors or in a cigar bar.An equally-determined, but currently quieter fight is going on in Los Angeles, where several anti-smoking motions are being debated. On the table now is the question of smoking in outdoor dining areas, in a city where 80% or more of the restaurants with outdoor facilities are already smoke-free. This makes no difference to the anti-smoking crowd, which is lobbying Los Angeles City Council members to enact this ban, but there is also an effort underway by cigar smokers to argue against it. Public discussion on the issue will heat up after the November 4 national elections are over. It is worthwhile to note that tobacco prohibition has been tried before . . . . and failed miserably. In Gordon Dillow’s excellent article called “Thank You For Not Smoking” for American Heritage in 1981, he noted that cigarette sales were banned by state law in Oklahoma in 1901, followed in later years by Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. Of these 13 states with cigarette prohibitions, six had repealed their laws by 1917 and ten had dropped the subject by 1921. Utah was the last to give up the fight in 1923. Ironically, the chief campaigner against tobacco was an Illinois woman named Lucy Paige Gaston, whose efforts were similar to those of the more-famous Carrie Nation against alcoholic beverages. But having failed, as Nation did, in her try at prohibition, Gaston died – in a cruel twist of fate – of throat cancer in 1924. |
| < Following Column | Previous Column > |
|---|
 |
 |
Did you know?
“Cigars, as we know them today, began serious production in Seville, Spain around 1676.
