Cigars, Cigar Information and where to find Premium Cigars, Discounted Cigars and even Cheap Cigars - BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION SHOULD BE BLOWN AWAY

BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION SHOULD BE BLOWN AWAY

BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION SHOULD BE BLOWN AWAY

Plus: Steals and Deals from Abner’s World, BestCigarPrices.com and Famous Smoke Shop

Los Angeles, January 20 – “Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even thought life may issue from them.”

Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno had it right in his 1913 masterwork, The Tragic Sense of Life. If we trace the mistakes of science from ancient times, through the belief that the world “is flat” to yesterday’s admissions by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control that it overstated the increase in obesity-related deaths by 35,000 a year, it’s hard to know what to believe . . . because the opposite may be true a few years later.

So now comes the Scotland arm of the British Medical Association (BMA), the latest authority to open its mouth and stuff it with a well-made English boot. Responding to evidence from cigarette manufacturers that the impact of so-called “secondhand smoke” is modest and can, in any case, be controlled by better ventilation and/or segregating facilities to all-non-smoking or all-smoking, the BMA Scotland’s chair, Dr. Peter Terry, retorted:

“Passive smoke kills. Businesses installing expensive ventilation systems will do so in the belief that they are protecting staff and the public from the ill-effects of secondhand smoke. The sad truth is that they are mistaken. . . .

“Although good ventilation can help reduce the irritability of smoke, it does not eliminate its poisonous components.”

OK, Doc, let’s try this experiment. Put a group of smokers in a big, country barn, open the double doors at both ends and blow a hurricane-strength wind through the barn. Think there will be any smoke left? Any of your poisonous gases?

No, there will be nothing. Everything not nailed down in that barn will be blown out the doors. The air will not be re-circulated, but replaced with air from the outside windstream. That’s what happens to any gas when displaced by stronger elements such as wind.

So ventilation does work! It’s only a matter of how much and what kind. But the project to produce such a standard is a place no bureaucrat – or scientist – will dare to tread.

The California law which eliminated smoking from enclosed spaces in 1994 required that such limitations would be in effect until the California Occupational Health and Safety Administration published standards for ventilation which would reduce tobacco-smoke residue to levels at which health risks would be negligible.

That was 11 years ago. To my knowledge, there are not only no regulations, but Cal OSHA has made no attempt to establish any. Arnold, help!

The politics of smoking have eclipsed any intelligent examination of the science of “passive” smoking. Good for the British cigarette companies to challenge the popular myth of secondhand smoke. Let’s see how they come out in the political discussion on smoking bans in Scotland.

Steals and Deals:
The top retail cigar merchants we track in our CigarWire Comparison Shopper spreadsheet are back in form following the holiday season with new lines, sizes and specials:

• Abner’s World:
A modest rollback of $3 the box for the La Gloria Cubana Serie R No. 4 (4 3/4 x 52) and No. 5 (5 1/2 x 54) in your choice of natural or maduro wrappers in boxes of 24, to $79.95 and $89.95, respectively.

Plus, nice prices – among the lowest we have seen in a while – for larger sizes of the standard Montecristo line from Altadis. These are perfectly-balanced cigars offered in the familiar yellow box of 25. Abner’s now has Churchills (7 x 48) for $129.95 the box while the famed No. 2 torpedos (6 x 50) are $164.95. They’re not giving them away, but the tariff is less than elsewhere.

• BestCigarPrices.com:
Here you can find two nice deals on some harder-to-find cigars that are worth a try:

> Cusano 18, featuring 18-year-old filler leaves from the famed Tabadom factory in the Dominican Republic. The blend is mellow and toasty and offered in boxes of 18 in the Robusto (5 x 50), Toro (61/2 x 46) and Churchill (7 1/4 x 50) sizes for $59-72. Naturally, it ranked 18th in our list of the top medium-bodied cigars available in the U.S. for 2004.

> Puros Indios Piramides No. 1, sensational torpedo-shaped cigars in a giant 7 1/2-inch by 60-ring format, in a yummy maduro wrapper in a trial-sized 3-pack for just $15.35. If you have not tried these cigars, they deserve your attention as some of the most flavorful cigars available at any price, and at this price, it’s a bargain.

• Famous Smoke Shop:
Famous has added the new Davidoff Millennium Piramides to their line and offers the rather expensive box of 10 at a small discount of $166.95, off of the regular retail price of $175. These new cigars mimic the famed Cuban “Piramides” factory size of 6 1/8 inches in length and 52 in ring gauge. It’s the shape made famous by the Montecristo No. 2, which debuted 70 years ago in 1935.

• Most suppliers are showing price increases on many of Davidoff of Geneva’s high-profile brands, most especially including most sizes of Avo (all five lines) by $3-4 the box and for Davidoff Milennium Blend, by $5-7 the box.
~ Rich Perelman

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