Gordon Mott
Most Recent Posts: See Also:
The Long Winter
Posted: 09:30 AM ET, April 02, 2007
I’m not naturally disposed to feel sorry for cigarette smokers. But for the last three months in the midst of winter’s deep freeze in New York, you can’t help but share their pain. They are easy to spot. Small huddles of people grouped as close to a building’s door as they can get, puffing away quickly so they can get back inside. Sometimes it is just a solitary smoker, standing there all bundled up. Some hardy souls often wear just shirts, without their winter coats, on a short smoke break before heading back upstairs to their jobs.
Their plight is caused by New York City’s smoking law, which prohibits all smoking in the workplace. Using that law as justification, many buildings have gone entirely “smoke-free,” so you can’t even have a separate smoking room for your employees. It forces a leper-like status on all smokers, denying them the right to use what remains a legal product in all 50 states. At least its legality was true the last time I looked.
Cigar smokers don’t suffer quite the same indignities. You don’t light up a cigar for a quick five-minute fix, so there’s no advantage in sneaking down to the curb to fire up a $5 cigar. But cigar lovers have been denied the pleasures of smoking indoors for decades, even during the phase when restaurants offered up non-smoking and smoking sections. The only catch then was that smoking sections usually prohibited pipes and cigars. As a result, a cigar smoker had to be creative in choosing a place to light up.
How many times have you looked out the window in traffic, and seen a lit cigar in the mouth of the driver next to you? How many times have you been walking down the street, even in the dead of winter, and smelled the unmistakable aroma of a handrolled product? That’s why places like golf courses, fishing camps, hunting blinds and sidewalks all over this country serve as refuges for lovers of the leaf.
But is that fair? I’m tired of using examples to compare what’s being done to smokers by the nanny state to other products or activities. But if people took the time to investigate just how facts are being twisted to support what has become a radical worldview, they would not only be appalled but maybe a little scared.
Take a look at those cigarette smokers standing outside your office building. That’s the future.
Reader Comments
Submit your comments
 |
- Access to ratings and tasting notes for more than
11,000 cigars
- Sneak previews of the best cigar ratings from Cigar Aficionado magazine - weeks before they are released to the public.
- Plus: The twice-monthly Cigar Insider newsletter, with exclusive cigar news and extensive cigar ratings, many of which will never appear in Cigar Aficionado magazine.
|
 |
|
Cigar Aficionado RSS Feed
User Name: Matthew Caruso, Jersey Posted: 03:20 PM ET, April 02, 2007
I understand your point Gordon, but from my own personal experience, lighting a cigar at a bar in the New York Tri-State area before the smoking ban was problematic thanks to the CIGARETTE smokers -- who would complain to the bartender, who would in turn ask me to extinguish the cigar or leave. It forced me to seek places out that allowed cigar smoke and there aren't many. Fortunately, cigar smokers were spared, in a sense, because cigar friendly establishments, such as cigar bars and smoke shoppes, were unmolested by the laws. Which brings me to a point I made on David's blog, why aren't more people taking advantage of this? The cigar smoker demographic is: 1. Male, 35-65 2. Professional 3. Somewhat of a disposible income (some more than others) 4. Impeccable and distinctive taste This is a recipie for a masterpiece, not disaster. Plus the fact that it is a place for those dirty cigarette smokers can enjoy a beverage inside (although I for one would love to see the "turnaround is fair play" rule enacted in this case). Either way, it seems to me that we cigar smokers in the NY Tri State area adapted out of necessity where to enjoy a cigar long before the smoking ban. What should happen going forward is that our message needs to get out to those with the interested of reaching our demographic to set up businesses that accomodate the smokers. They can truly prosper, both from a financial and influencer prespective. -Matt