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This bill will pass easily and will be signed by Obama; the only question is when. Boston smoking ban vote postponed Thursday’s scheduled vote on a series of new anti-smoking provisions proposed by the Boston Public Health Commission has been postponed until December, according to a story in the Boston Globe. The newspaper reported that the Public Health Commission received hundreds of comments on its proposals and wants time to review them. Among the proposals are bans on smoking at all outdoor dining areas, bans on sales of tobacco products in pharmacies, bans on smoking on school grounds and the closure of all cigar bars in the city within four years. Heavy lobbying has been going on on both sides of the argument and the owners of the city’s handful of existing cigar bars have been particularly vocal, along with Boston-area cigar shops, of the continued reduction in the number of places to smoke in public along with the extinction of the cigar bars altogether. Whispers of a compromise regarding at least the existing cigar bars have been heard and, if true, would be helpful to the current owners. But what will that do for smokers in the future if the opening of any new cigar-bar sites is banned, or if an outdoor smoking ban eliminates the already-tiny number of restaurants which allow cigar smoking on their patios? U.S. Treasury issues no fines on cigar smokers in October The monthly report of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the unit of the U.S. Treasury which enforces (among other things) the trade embargo with Cuba, issued no civil penalties in its October report against individuals who purchased Cuban cigars via the Internet. That’s a surprise only inasmuch as the OFAC had issued twice as many citations for that offense in the first nine months of 2008 as it did for the whole year in 2007. However, in a demonstration of just how determined the enforcement effort is at present, the OFAC announced a settlement with the online travel site Priceline.com “to settle allegations of violations of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations occurring between September 2004 and November 2007. OFAC alleged that foreign subsidiaries of Priceline provided travel-related services in which Cuba or Cuban nationals had an interest by arranging hotel reservations for Cuban nationals without an OFAC license.” The company paid $12,250 to settle the matter. This action demonstrates the long arm of the U.S. embargo, which will not be easily untangled even if there is a thaw in diplomatic relations between the countries. ~ Rich Perelman CLASSIFIED ADVERTISINGCigar Humidors and Cigar Accessories at Humidor Vault! Your online cigar humidor source, with rock-bottom pricing and fantastic customer support!A limited amount of classified advertising is available in this space on a weekly basis. For details, call Pat Harris at (213) 365-7965 or inquire by email by clicking here. Have an opinion? You can send it using the “Comment” button below! Don’t forget to register for our drawing for free cigars and accessories! Just click on the “Register & Win” button above; enter today! Looking for a cigar party? Take a look at our exclusive list of hundreds of cigar events across the country, listed by state and date, only on CigarCyclopedia.com!
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Did you know?
“Although introduced by Robert Levin of Holt's, Ashton cigars are named for British pipemaker William Ashton Taylor.
