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MR. BOND, HAVE A CIGAR!

Plus: new Macanudo Robust size and Opus X on auction

Los Angeles, February 10 – Score one for Agent 007 and his Havana cigar!

Despite the lobbying effort of anti-smoking groups, the British Board of Film Classification – the body that gives films ratings for appropriateness for children, teenagers and adults – decided that Pierce Brosnan’s on-screen puffs of a Havana cigar passed the smell test.

While the Board acknowledged that the glamorization of smoking will be a concern in rating future films, the 2002 release “Die Another Day” passed the test, despite anti-tobacco group protests.

The first new classification guidelines since 2000 were announced yesterday after the Board’s research efforts – including focus groups and inquiries with more than 11,000 people – were completed.

A Board spokeswomen commented, “We showed the groups clips including Die Another Day where James Bond was smoking a cigar. They were quite happy with it and thought a junior audience were unlikely to take it up.”

David Cooke, a Board director, noted that “Quite a high percentage felt quite strongly we shouldn’t prohibit smoking in films because it would be unrealistic. But as with drug and alcohol abuse, we will be looking at the issue of glamorisation, at junior levels in particular. It may influence us in which classification level to go for.”

The Board report noted that the primary concerns of the public included drug taking, violence and sexual activity in both movies and in computer games.

But Bond and his cigar are safe, at least for now.

Desperate Scientists
The British Medical Journal published a new study this week, led by Imperial College (London, England) researcher Dr. Paolo Vineis, concerning secondhand smoking in ten European nations.

Out of 500,000 subjects who were profiled, he focused on 123,479 who had exposure to secondhand smoke. From this population, aged 35 to 74, he found a grand total of 97 incidents of lung cancer, 20 cases of upper respiratory cancer and 14 other deaths from emphysema for a total of 131 or 0.1 percent (that’s one-tenth of one percent).

Of course, this infinitesimal percentage is not mentioned and the study concludes that smoking is dangerous. How dangerous? It concludes that overall, passive smoking is 30% more likely to cause cancer than for non-smokers.

A little work with the calculator indicates that this statistic means that if you were exposed to secondhand smoke, you had a 10th-of-a-percent chance of getting lung or respiratory cancer or emphysema. If you weren’t exposed, the difference is 24 thousandths of a percent! That’s 0.024 of one percent! Can such a difference even be considered to be statistically valid based on questionnaires?

The study has other problems such as 77.7% of the respondents being women and use of questionnaires instead of interviews or examinations for only 1.3% of the subjects. Only 1,574 persons were actually interviews in person and from this small sample, additional data was derived without reference to a control population of non-smokers.

With studies like this, it’s no wonder that medical journals keep felling trees to convince each other (and us) that secondhand smoke is so dangerous. One day they’ll get it right, but a lot more trees will be wasted in the meantime.

Macanudo Robust Getting Clubby:
General Cigar has introduced a billy-club-sized version of its Macanudo Robust blend to be enjoyed primarily at its Club Macanudo lounge in New York.

The “Club Macanudo” size is 8 1/2 inches long by 47 ring, the same dimensions as the Duke of Wellington model in the regular Macanudo line. But the Robust blend offers a stronger flavor thanks to its blend of Dominican, Honduran and Nicaraguan filler leaves, combined with a very dark, Connecticut-grown wrapper and binder.

The Club Macanudo is attractively packaged in glass tubes in boxes of eight. It’s available at the Club Macanudo, of course, but also for a limited time from J-R Cigars at $59 the box.

Hammer Time:
That box of Fuente Fuente Opus X on eBay did skyrocket in price, but not as much as predicted when bidding closed yesterday.

The box of 29 Robustos (5 1/4 x 50) ended up drawing 15 bids and earning a final price of $611.87, or approximately $21.10 per cigar. That’s lower than some auctions for Opus X, but the smaller size also needs to be taken into account.

For comparison, winning bids for single Padron Serie 1926 40th Anniversary cigars – torpedoes of 6 1/2 inches by 54 ring – on CigarAuctioneer.com reached a low of $36 and a high of $50 and another auction of the same cigar is underway now.

Is there a new champ in the auction ring? Only time will tell, but the Padrons can be satisfied that their cigars now rank with the most-desired of any, worldwide.
~ Rich Perelman\

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