Liam Neeson wants the stars of The A-Team to wear nicotine patches instead of chain smoking cigars if there is a sequel. The actor plays John ‘Hannibal’ Smith in Joe Carnahan’s big screen adaptation of the hit 1980s TV show. The film is about a group of US Army Special Forces soldiers who become mercenaries after they escape from jail, where they were sent after they were convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. Liam’s character is famous for his love of cigars, which horrified the actor, who quit smoking in the 1990s. He tried to use rubber cigars at first, but was chain-smoking again by the second day of filming.

“I stopped smoking 16 years ago, it was a real issue for me,” Liam told Australia radio programme The Kyle and Jackie O Show. “Joe insisted I have cigars and because it was Canada, they don’t have a trade embargo with Cuba and the props guys got me these amazing Cuban cigars.

“I got them to make rubber ones, because I didn’t want to be puffing on a cigar, but Joe, who is a big cigar smoker said, ‘No, it looks so false!’ I said, “Joe, I’m an addict! I can’t smoke this stuff!’ Day 2 and I discovered cigars. It was dangerous!”

Liam has now managed to wean himself off tobacco for a second time, and has already decided he will never smoke for a film again. If there is a sequel to The A-Team, he is planning to suggest his character wears nicotine patches instead of smoking.

“If we do a sequel, I think I’ll have to insist on no cigars,” Liam said. “We’ll all have patches on instead.”

From stuff.co.nz, June 21, 2010

LONDON (June 16) — At a 1945 lunch with the king of Saudi Arabia, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was told that he couldn’t spark up a stogie in the pious monarch’s presence. The wartime leader protested, saying his own “rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars … before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.” Sensibly, the Saudi ruler relented. Nowadays, though, some people aren’t so willing to indulge the ex-prime minister’s addiction. Like the unknown censor who airbrushed a cigar from an iconic photo of Churchill that adorns the entrance to London’s Britain at War Museum.

Taken at the opening of a new air base in 1948, the poster shows the wartime chief flashing his famous V for victory sign. But the Cuban roll that was originally clamped between Churchill’s lips has disappeared, leaving the prime minister with an unseemly open-mouthed gawp.
“Viewing the now disfigured image reveals just how unhinged the vociferous anti-smoking lobby has become,” David McAdam, the visitor who first noticed that the PM had posthumously kicked his taste for tobacco, told the Daily Mail. “So much for the notion that only communist tyrants airbrushed history.”

Museum manager John Welsh denied having anything to do with the edit. He said that he didn’t notice the missing cigar until McAdam approached his staff.

“We’ve got all sorts of images in the museum, some with cigars and some without,” Welsh told the paper. “We’ve even got wartime adverts for cigarettes in the lift down to the air raid shelter, so we wouldn’t have asked for there to be no cigar.” He refused to reveal who originally turned the photo into a poster for the museum, and presumably removed the cigar.

But Churchill isn’t the first famous smoker to have his nicotine fix retrospectively nixed. Here’s a pack of puffers whose acts of inhaling have also been consigned to the ashtray of history:

Paul McCartney
Peer closely at the original artwork of the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” LP and you might just notice that a barefoot Macca is clutching a cigarette in his right hand. That tiny smoke was too much for U.S. print giant Allposters, who in 2003 demanded that the butt be digitally removed. Beatles publisher Apple Records later protested, telling the BBC, “We have never agreed to anything like this.”

Bette Davis
In 2008, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in honor of the sultry starlet, based on a still from 1950’s “All About Eve.” But the hand-painted portrait left out an important detail featured in the original image: a tobacco stick the actress had been elegantly holding in her hand.

And if there was anything Davis was known for in Hollywood — OK, apart from that — it was her incessant smoking. “I’ve been close to Bette Davis for 38 years,” quipped Henry Fonda at a 1979 roast of the actress, “and I have the cigarette burns to prove it.”

Jean-Paul Sartre
Once asked by a Newsweek journalist to list the important things in his life, the grumpy French philosopher replied, “I don’t know. Everything. Living. Smoking.” But a 2005 celebration of the existentialist’s life at Paris’ National Library couldn’t show the philosopher indulging in his favorite activity, in case it broke tough tobacco advertising laws.

As there are few photos of Sartre not smoking — he polished off two packs of cigarettes and two tobacco-stuffed pipes a day — the library was forced to edit out the philosopher’s Gauloise in a 1946 shot.

Clement Hurd
A portrait of the famed illustrator clutching a cigarette appeared in the back of the classic children’s book “Goodnight Moon” for some 20 years. But in 1995, Kate Jackson — then editor-in-chief of publisher HarperCollins — spotted the cancer causer and had it smudged out. “It is potentially a harmful message to very young kids,” Jackson told The New York Times, “and it doesn’t need to be there.”

That act of censorship outraged some long-standing “Goodnight” fans, who demanded the photo be restored to its smoky glory. Hurd’s son, though, said the illustrator — who died in 1988 — wouldn’t have been too bothered, as he’d kicked the habit in the 1950s and “really disliked smoking later in life.”

aolnews.com, June 17, 2010

Cuba’s most famous tobacco grower, Alejandro Robaina, died this week. Robaina, who was 91, belonged to one of Cuba’s oldest tobacco-growing families.

He was devoted to his tobacco crop, and when Fidel Castro herded most tobacco growers onto collective farms, Robaina stood his ground. His tobacco was of such high quality that he was allowed to keep his plantation.

Cuba’s most famous tobacco grower, Alejandro Robaina has died. He was 91, smoked his first cigar at the age of nine. And to his dying days he was devoted to his crop.

Robaina’s cigar tobacco was of such high quality that Fidel Castro allowed the grower to keep his plantation when other growers were herded onto collective farms.

NPR’s Tom Gjelten profiled Alejandro Robaina for this program in 1999 and has this remembrance.

TOM GJELTEN: Alejandro Robaina raised tobacco leaf in eastern Cuba on 35 acres his family settled back in 1845. I visited him one lovely afternoon a decade ago.

Mr. ALEJANDRO ROBAINA (Tobacco Grower): (Through translator) My grandfather began growing tobacco on this land in the last century. And then came my father and then me, then my son and my grandson. I’m famous, because my tobacco is among the best in the world, or the best in the world.

GJELTEN: A classic problem with socialism is the loss of pride in private production. That’s what made Alejandro Robaina’s story so special in socialist Cuba. He loved his tobacco. As we sat on his patio that day, Don Alejandro showed me what made his tobacco a national treasure. Taking a bunch of dry, fermented leaves, he rubbed them one by one.

Mr. ROBAINA: (Spanish spoken)

GJELTEN: See how they shine, he said. The leaves were as smooth as satin.

Mr. ROBAINA: (Spanish spoken)

GJELTEN: Each leaf was a little different, he pointed out. And he showed me how the leaves would be combined to produce a special flavor.

Mr. ROBAINA: (Spanish spoken)

GJELTEN: Alejandro Robaina had already been working in his fields for 30 years when Fidel Castro came to power and Fidel agreed to leave him alone. A good thing. After the revolution, Robaina told me, Cuban tobacco took a turn for the worse.

Mr. ROBAINA: (Through translator) A little of the quality was lost, let’s be frank. For a while the state didn’t take care of the tobacco. But now the state is committed to good tobacco, because it earns good money.

GJELTEN: In his later years, Don Alejandro became Cuba’s best known cigar ambassador, traveling the world to promote Cuban cigars. He had a decent income, though only by Cuban standards.

Mr. ROBAINA: (Spanish spoken)

GJELTEN: I think I should make more, he told me. Mucho mas, he joked. Don Alejandro died a week ago today, leaving his Cuban tobacco farm in the hands of grandson.

Tom Gjelten, NPR News.

Smoking may be going out of fashion in many countries, but in Havana, Matt Frei finds Cuba’s love affair with the cigar continues.The United States famously takes a very fundamentalist attitude to smoking in public.

Want to light up in a restaurant or a bar in Manhattan? Forget it.

How about a stealthy cigarette on the pavement outside our office in Washington? No way.

They will call the cops. The people who do smoke are forced to huddle in underground garages and behind garbage bins as if they were doing crack cocaine.

For a very casual and occasional smoker like me the ostracism has been enough to make me quit for good. Until, that is, I went to Havana.

Smoking passion

Can you imagine my surprise when I saw the cleaning woman in my hotel room, vacuuming the carpet with a huge cigar protruding from her lips?

I do not think they distinguish between smoking and non-smoking rooms in Cuba.
The security guard hovering at the front door was chomping on something the tobacco industry proudly refers to as a “Wide Churchill”.

Cuba smokes with a vengeance. Perhaps it is another way of thumbing its nose at Uncle Sam.

It is certainly another item on the long list of idiosyncrasies.

From the vintage Buicks and Chevys rattling along the pot-holed streets like miracles of recycling, to the crumbling colonial facades, to the earnest posters calling for perpetual revolution, courtesy of the Castro brothers.

Exploding cigar

Lucky for cigars, Fidel Castro smoked them with relish. They were his official vice of choice.

Even today as an octogenarian retiree, he apparently still likes the occasional puff.

When he was younger Castro used to smoke as many as six cigars a day. He was so reliably hooked on them that the CIA even had the brilliant idea of blowing one of them up.

That was assassination attempt 105, I think, out of the 638 which the Cuban intelligence proudly lists.

For his part Castro took the threat seriously and recruited four of Cuba’s best cigar rollers to work undercover in a former palace that had once belonged to a sugar cane baron.

Here they rolled the Commandante’s daily supply in secret, safe from the tampering of the CIA. This is now the Cohiba cigar factory, producing perhaps the world’s finest and most expensive brand.

Cigar festival

Our visit to Havana happened to coincide with the annual cigar festival. This has to be one of the strangest trade fairs on the planet.

For a whole week some of the world’s most ostentatious capitalists descend on one of the world’s last bastions of genuine communism, to smoke themselves to near death.
The highlight is a gala dinner hosted by Habanos, Cuba’s state monopoly cigar manufacturer.

Cigars account for the country’s most lucrative export after nickel.

If you are a paying guest, the dinner costs $500 (£350) a head. They serve five courses and a different cigar with each one of them.

The charming young blonde woman I was sitting next to – the head of a well known international distributor – had brought along a packet of cigarettes, for a quick smoke between cigar courses. You do not want to be caught short. Do you?

It was an astonishing collection of guests.
There was the Japanese toy tycoon with the long ponytail.

The morbidly obese Beijing bigwig who used his monster cigar like a bayonet.

The Russian Mafioso with pitted skin that looked as if someone had stubbed several cigarillos out on his cheeks.

A brace of British lords, who squeezed their Cohibas cigars in deep appreciation of their elasticity, and the posse of very quiet Americans, who had slipped under the US state department’s radar.

The waiters – there were hundreds of them – glowered at the assembled crowd who were puffing on something that cost more than they were lucky to earn in a whole month.

The highlight of the evening? An auction of humidors, stuffed with cigars, which fetched $1m or so. The whole evening was the very definition of capitalist excess.

Smoky atmosphere

So why did the authorities broadcast it live on state television? And why did it not kick-off the counter-revolution in a country plagued by genuine poverty and shortages of just about everything?

It appears that national pride in Cuban cigars – still the best in the world – trumps resentment.

Call it another miracle trick of a regime that has already survived the collapse of communism and the illness of Fidel Castro. The dinner took place in a conference centre that resembled an airport hangar.

A thousands guests, each supplied with five cigars. Imagine the air.

This was either the passive smoking Olympics or for active smokers just another Friday night out in Havana.

So I joined in – with relish – trying not to lose face with the world champion smoker on my right. After four hours, only three cigars and one cigarette, I had to call it quits.

My lungs demanded it. My brain agreed.

I ran out of the giant hall, past guest and tables that had disappeared behind dense clouds of smoke. A waiter flung open the door, clearly fearing the worst.

I inhaled the night air like a drowning man gasping for breath.

The next morning I sent all my clothes to the hotel laundry, brushed my teeth about four times and began nursing a nicotine hangover that lasted for two solid days.

My big mistake was not to follow Bill Clinton’s edict. I smoked and I inhaled.

COLUMBIA — City Council members are set to consider filing suit against a Columbia tobacco store Wednesday, in what would be the first attempt to enforce the city’s smoking ban in effect since October 2008.

At issue is a dispute between the city and The Tobacco Merchant on Bower Parkway. Columbia’s ban prohibits smoking in all workplaces, including bars and restaurants, but it exempts stores that mainly sell tobacco products.

The Tobacco Merchant has been open in Harbison since 1997 selling mainly cigars, pipes and other tobacco items. In early 2009 the store added a bar after the city approved its license request to also sell beer. City officials now say that addition categorizes the store as a bar, and makes smoking illegal, regardless of the fact that the majority of sales are still tobacco related.

The text of Columbia’s smoking ban exempts retail tobacco stores if they don’t sell food, don’t allow customers under age 18, and other products they sell are “merely incidental.” The ordinance does not define what incidental sales mean.

Violations of the smoking ban are not considered criminal, but violators are subject to a $25 civil fine. If councilmembers approve filing suit, that lawsuit would request a judge issue an injunction forcing The Tobacco Merchant to not allow smoking on its premises.

So what do you think about the proposed lawsuit? Vote in today’s WACH FOX News Question of the Day on the main page of our website and let us know whether you think banning smoking in a store that sells tobacco goes too far, or if you think it is necessary for public health.

Also be sure to leave your comments by clicking the “post a comment” button below this story.

By Bryan Cox
January 05, 2010

The air in H Upmann’s cigar factory in Havana’s Vedado district is thick with the sweet pungent smell of tobacco.
It’s hot and humid. There is no air conditioning because that would dry out the precious leaves.

In the long main galley, row upon row of workers sit side by side on long wooden benches – dozens of men and women all rolling cigar after cigar.

Producing Cuba’s famous handmade cigars is a highly skilled but monotonous job which demands concentration.

There’s no time for chatting to workmates – quotas must be met.

At the front of the room there’s a raised platform where a lone figure sits in front of a microphone, reading out loud the official state newspaper Granma.

Instead of canned music, many cigar factories in Cuba still rely on the ancient tradition of employing a reader to help workers pass away the day.

Gricel Valdes-Lombillo, a matronly former school teacher, has been this factory’s official reader for the past 20 years.

In the morning she goes through the state-run newspaper Granma cover to cover.

Later in the day she returns to the platform to read a book.

It’s a job Gricel Valdes-Lombillo claims she has never tired of.

“I feel useful as a person, giving everyone a bit of knowledge and culture.

“The workers here see me as a councillor, a cultural advisor, and someone who knows about law, psychology and love.”

Once the newspaper reading is over workers have a say in what they would like to listen to.

There’s a mix of material ranging from classics to modern novels, like the Da Vinci Code, as well as the occasional self-help books and magazines.

On the day I visited the factory Gricel was reading Alexandre Dumas’ classic, the Count of Monte Cristo, a long-time favourite here.

The book was an old, well-worn, large print edition which looked as if it had been in the collection since long before the revolution.

Having someone read out loud on the shop floor is a tradition which dates back to the 1860s.

Back then the reader would have been one of the cigar rollers, someone who could read and had a good voice.

Diction and drama

According to Zoe Nocedo Primo, director of Havana’s cigar museum, each cigar worker used to give a percentage of his wages to pay the reader.

“In those days they would choose amongst themselves, someone with a good voice and good diction. They looked for rhythm in the voice so he could dramatise the reading.”

They weren’t always popular with factory owners or the authorities.

For years cigar workers had a reputation for being amongst the better educated and politically active groups.

For a while the practice spread to cigar factories in Florida, as well as Mexico and Spain.

Today, though, the tradition only survives in Cuba, with an estimated 250 “lectores” or cigar readers employed at factories across the island.

Rafael Enchemendia is a long-time cigar roller who has risen to become one of the shopfloor foremen.

He says it helps everyone concentrate on what they are doing.

“You can roll a cigar while listening and still meet targets and earn a living.

“It’s very good because you are learning something while working, being educated in some way about what’s happening in the world and in Cuba.”

It has also broadened the horizons of many of the workers.

Novel inspiration

“It’s entertaining and instructive.”

Another cigar roller, Yarima, explained between finishing one cigar and reaching for the tobacco leaves to make the next one.

She added that she had never read a book at home before starting work here.

Tradition has it that some of Cuba’s best known cigar brands were named after the workers’ favourite books.

The H Upmann factory, for example, produces two well known international brands – Montecristos named after Dumas’ book and Romeo y Julieta, after Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

This factory was first opened in the 1840s.

It is now officially called the Jose Marti Cigar factory although the name H Upmann is still on the factory wall above the main gate.

It was nationalised after the revolution and the former owners left the country, setting up a rival H Upmann brand produced for the American market in the Dominican Republic.

The Cuban-made Petit Upmann cigar was reputedly the favourite cigar of US President John F Kennedy.

Legend has it that the night before he signed the trade embargo he sent his press secretary Pierre Salinger out to buy every box he could find in Washington, some 1,200 cigars in total.

Despite the embargo, Cuba remains the world’s top-selling producer of premium hand-rolled cigars.

Some put it down to the quality of the tobacco grown here, others to the skill of the workforce.

Could it be that another secret to success is the soothing and concentrating power of the cigar reader?

DAVID BECKHAM is today exposed as a secret smoker – who sneaks into his garden for a crafty cigar after wife POSH BARRED him from lighting up in their LA mansion.

The ex-SPICE GIRL, 35, was forced to ban him because he has acquired a taste for luxury hand-rolled Cubans while in America.

Last night a family friend said of the England soccer icon, 34: “He loves the taste. I think he likes the image too. Lots of Hollywood stars smoke them.”

The revelation comes barely a week after the superstar – who now plays for US team LA Galaxy – was pictured using an asthma inhaler.

Becks – famed for keeping himself superfit – has told friends it was nothing to do with his smoking. He was said by the pal to mistakenly see cigars as LESS harmful than ciggies.

The chum admitted: “It’s strange to see such an athlete as Becks smoking. But he doesn’t have any other vices.

“Of course, he only smokes the best – they’re usually fifty-dollar-a-pop Cohibas.”

His secret craving echoes the lyrics of the Spice Girls hit Wannabe – in which they sang: “I really really really wanna zig-a-zig-ahh.”

But Victoria – who famously used to smoke cigars HERSELF – does not want him puffing away in front of sons BROOKLYN, ten, ROMEO, seven, and CRUZ, four.

Becks is believed to have begun smoking soon after arriving in LA – where Cuban cigars are seen as a forbidden pleasure at glitzy parties.

They are outlawed under the US trade embargo on the island’s communist regime.

A friend of Becks said: “The smoking is just his way of relaxing as he nears the end of his career. There is no doubt he is very fit for his age and takes exceptional care of himself.”

The star’s spokesman tried to play down his love of cigars, saying it was “not true” to describe him as a smoker.

The aide claimed: “He may have had a puff on a cigar once or twice in the past to make a celebration but that is it.”
Ace’s academy shutting

DAVID Beckham’s flagship football academy is closing in January.

The multi-million pound centre’s five-year lease on its site in Greenwich, South London, is not being renewed.

Owners AEG, who also control Beckham’s US club LA Galaxy, are planning an Olympic training centre there.

Now Beckham, whose academy has taught 100,000 kids, will take the project on tour around Britain. He launched the academy in 2005 with Ј2million of his own money.

The 60 staff have been told it is closing but most have been promised new jobs.

Last night a spokesman for Beckham said: “We always knew the lease was coming to an end. The academy is now moving beyond one site to reach more children.”

TAMPA – Last spring, the cigar industry fretted that the government might tax so-called “little cigars” into oblivion.

Several months later, though, it appears the makers of cigarette-shaped little cigars have found a way to escape the high taxes. The cigar makers have added more weight to their cigars, reclassified them as large cigars and now are subject to a lower tax rate, said Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America.

Last spring, the cigar industry rallied against a higher tax rate implemented to benefit the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. One Tampa cigar factory, Hav-A-Tampa, blamed SCHIP for a steep drop in sales, and it ceased its Tampa operations over the summer. Hav-A-Tampa’s parent, Altadis USA, moved the Tampa plant’s operations to Puerto Rico.

Little cigars may not be as iconic as fat stogies, but hundreds of millions are produced every year. They look like cigarettes and come 20 to a pack. Some popular brands include Cheyenne and Dutch Treats.

Under the new tax rates, little cigars and large cigars are taxed differently, which apparently has given rise to some major changes in cigar production.

For example, little cigars had been taxed at about 4 cents per pack before the new tax rate took effect. That rose to about $1.01 per pack after April 1.

Large cigars previously had been taxed at about 5 cents per cigar. That rose to up to 40 cents per cigar after April, depending on price. These federal tax rates do not include separate state taxes.

In recent months, the cigar industry has seen a curious surge in the production of large cigars. Technically, the government classified large cigars as those that weigh more than 3 pounds per 1,000 cigars. Little cigars weigh less than 3 pounds per 1,000.

For example, factories in the United States and Puerto Rico produced about 743 million large cigars in August, according to data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. That’s up 85 percent from August 2008, when they made 402 million large cigars.

Meanwhile, production of little cigars plummeted. In August, factories in the United States and Puerto Rico produced about 145 million little cigars, down from about 480 million little cigars in August 2008. Cigars made outside of the United States and Puerto Rico saw a similar rise in large cigar production and decline in production of little cigars.

What’s going on?

Sharp, the cigar association president, said it appears cigar makers changed their production techniques to factor in the SCHIP tax. Cigar makers began adding enough extra weight to their little cigars so they exceeded the 3-pounds-per-1,000 threshold. So they could be classified now as large cigars.

Because of the complicated way cigars are taxed, Sharp said he didn’t know how much cigar makers were saving by morphing into large cigars.

“I certainly didn’t anticipate the migration factor,” Sharp said. “What I anticipated was the decimation of the little cigar category.”

By MICHAEL SASSO | The Tampa Tribune
November 3, 2009

Overseas tobacco companies have expanded their market share in Korea to 30 percent over the last 10 years, while the market share of Korea Tobacco & Ginseng (KT&G) fell from 90 percent to 60 percent.

Industry figures out Sunday show that KT&G sold 29.67 billion cigarettes in the first half of this year, down 3.5 percent from a year ago. In the third quarter, KT&G sold 16.2 billion cigarettes, down 500 million cigarettes or 3 percent on-year. Its market share for the first half stood at 64.1 percent, dropping to 62.5 percent in the third quarter.

The market share of rivals, mostly foreign firms such as British American Tobacco and Philip Morris, rose to 37.5 percent.

KT&G’s market share has been dwindling since international tobacco companies launched aggressive marketing campaigns in Korea, plummeting over 30 percentage points from 93.5 percent in 1999.

Total sales of tobacco in Korea shrank from 106.6 billion cigarettes in 1998 to 94.9 billion last year.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce is investigating whether two tobacco companies are trying to skirt a federal ban on flavored cigarettes by offering their products as cigars instead, according to letters sent to the companies by the committee’s chairman.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., sent letters to California-based Kretek International and North Carolina-based Cheyenne International targeting their products on Friday.

Both companies had previously sold flavored cigarettes, which were banned last month. They have recently released flavored cigars that are close to the size of a cigarette but are wrapped in tobacco leaves rather than paper and contain cigar tobacco.

Waxman is asking both companies to defend the products, provide sales figures and all communications about the decision to market the flavored cigars.

Kretek International, the largest distributor of clove-flavored tobacco products in the U.S., filed suit last month asking a federal court to decide whether its new Djarum-brand filtered cigars fall under the ban. A Kretek spokesman did not immediately return an e-mail message seeking comment.

A spokesperson for Cheyenne International did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.

Tony Marino has moved his business and cut his inventory and overhead by more than half.
The smoking business isn’t what it used to be.
“The government wants this business to basically be zero,” said Marino, who owns A.R.M Cigar Co. in Boardman.

In the last several years, state and local government have led a charge to curb smoking. A voter-approved statewide smoking ban in 2007 has hurt business, and a national tax to fund children’s health care has put a dent in smoke-shop revenue, local owners have said.

Since May 2007 when the ban went into effect, the state has received more than 44,000 complaints from individuals and issued 3,100 warning letters and 1,800 fines, according to The Associated Press.

Enforcement of the ban is in contention now at the state’s 10th District Court of Appeals in Franklin County, an effort the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association supports.

“Not only should there be no such thing as legislated smoking bans, but the Ohio inspectors are slapping fines and citations willy-nilly against businesses that are doing all they can to enforce the law, said Chris McCalla, legislative director for IPCPR, in a prepared statement.

The law prohibits bar and restaurant owners from permitting smoking. The Buckeye Institute is challenging whether a smoker’s lighting up in an establishment qualifies as the owner’s permitting him or her to do so, said Maurice Thompson, director of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law. The case could overturn previous citations, Thompson said, adding that the Buckeye Institute will challenge the constitutionality of the law itself in another case later this week.

“These fines are crippling small businesses,” Thompson said.

Local cigar-store owners said that they agree that the smoking ban has hurt business but that a recent national tax has had a greater effect.

“The government should just get rid of the smoking ban,” said Geno Bellatto, who owns Havana House locations in Boardman and Niles and a Plaza Book & Smoke Shop in Austintown. “If they’re going to keep taxing us, how are we going to stay afloat?”

One of President Barack Obama’s first actions was reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is funded in part by taxes on tobacco products. The new law increased taxes on tobacco products April 1, raising the taxes on a pack of cigarettes by 62 cents and the taxes on a small cigar by $1.01, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Those taxes have hurt the cigar industry, including local shops that already were reeling from the smoking ban.

“It blew the heck out of the cigar business,” Marino said.

Marino moved his business from Market Street, where he had a smoking lounge and larger selection, to Stadium Drive, where he has cut the size of his space and the number of cigars he carries from 500 to 200.

“I had a beautiful spot. I had to move. I had to downsize because revenue wasn’t coming in,” he said.

The efforts to curb smoking could be having a financial effect on the state budget too. A Federal Reserve study found that the statewide smoking ban in Illinois has resulted in losses of more than $200 million in tax revenue.

The state of Ohio made cuts to several state-funded agencies and programs this year as it sought to fill a budget gap of $3.2 billion.

For Bob Kosa, who owns R Cigars in Cortland, the combination of the downturn in the economy and the smoking ban have hurt his establishment.

“Before, I’d have people coming in that were buying cigars and going to the factory and going to work to smoke them,” Kosa said. “I used to wholesale to some of the bars, but I can’t do that anymore.”

Kosa is getting out of the business after 11 years as he retires to Florida, but he said that another business owner is taking over and keeping the smoke shop open.

“The market is still there,” Marino said. “That ban didn’t help. … It was the tax that killed it.”


rrouan@vindy.com

Kelly Kolod is the granddaughter of the founder of Cousin’s Cigar in Woodmere.
She represents the third generation in this family owned business, which has become increasingly popular. Cigar aficionados take their smoking very seriously and they like to shop at stores that take cigars very seriously.

The Woodmere location is one of five stores in Ohio and a new store has just opened in Florida.

On Thursday evening of last week, Cousin’s Cigar sponsored its 15th annual event entitled The Cleveland Smoke at Landerhaven.

It was a rousing success as dinner and cigar smoking took place under the stars.

Cigars with brand names such as Macanudo, Camacho, C.A.O, Arturo Fuente, Partagas, Davidoff, Perdomo, Romeo y Julieta were among the choices enjoyed by the attendees.

At the store — inside beautiful display cases that are kept impeccably clean — more than 100 brands of cigars are available for purchase. The cigars are manufactured mainly in three countries: The Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras.

Everything a cigar smoker could desire is sold here, including humidors in all sizes. They range in price from $45 to thousands of dollars.

There are ashtrays, cigar cases, pipes, pipe holders, tobacco, cigar cutters, and lighters that are basic in design or encrusted with diamonds. Those who know cigar smokers might just find the perfect gift in this store.

It is a state law that a consumer has to be 18 years of age to purchase any form of tobacco products.

Kolod told me that younger men are buying pipes, which she said represented a new trend. The first Cousin’s Cigar was opened in 1951 by Sid Kolod, who was both a pipe smoker and a cigar smoker. Sid lived to be 93.

The store at 28400 Chagrin Blvd. is quite spacious.

While I was there three men sat in oversized leather chairs while smoking cigars, sharing conversation and, watching the news in the store’s lounge area. There is a glass-enclosed area where lockers can be rented to keep personal items.

I imagine this is the answer for all those people who like cigars, but find there aren’t too many places that are user friendly to cigar smokers.

I viewed a cigar that cost $45, and, for a cigar connoisseur, that is probably comparable to someone like me who values a fine bottle of wine. There are a variety of choices for a variety of tastes.

Cigars can cost anywhere from $3 to $60.

Unique to current business Strategies, this company doesn’t have a Web site. That reality just might prove that a cigar smoker doesn’t need the Internet in order to find a good smoke.

WHAT’S THE SCOOP? Cousin’s Cigar sells empty cigar boxes starting at $3. I was quite taken with the many shapes and sizes that were available. Apparently these are often recycled into useful items like purses and decorative containers for tabletops. Cousin’s Cigar can be reached by calling (216) 464-9396.

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