New Orleans, – The Jose Carlos Cigars is proud to introduce its line of premium handmade cigars. Jose Carlos Cigars come in three select wrappers and two sizes. The wrappers include Connecticut, Habano and Corojo. Sizes include Robusto 5×52 and Toro 6×52 available in boxes of 26 with additional sizes to be released in the summer of 2010.

“The 2009 IPCPR show release is a result of our retailers’ request for greater availability” said Bill Davies. After years in the making for this ultra boutique brand, IPCPR 2009 will be the official introduction of this exceptional cigar. The Jose Carlos Cigar is manufactured by Davies, a high tech marketer, who’s passion for cigars overcame him on a trip to Nicaragua where met a young man who was abandoned by his parents for a better life in America. “The young man, Jose Carlos, had an attitude and spirit that was an inspiration to me to create a better cigar for my friends and a better life for those less fortunate” said Davies. This is more important than ever, as we showcase our innovative processes to bring quality handmade products to market for our retailers and consumers

The 2009 IPCPR show release is a result of our retailers’ request for greater availability
The young man, Jose Carlos, had an attitude and spirit that was an inspiration to me to create a better cigar for my friends and a better life for those less fortunate
The kickoff party for this new line of cigars is Saturday August 8, 2009 from 8:00 to 10:00 at French 75 Bar where smoking is allowed in the historic Arnaud’s Restaurant, located at 813 Bienville Street between Bourbon & Dauphine Streets in the Historic French Quarter district of New Orleans.


© Prweb

The Scandinavian Tobacco Group is delighted to announce the addition of Café Crème Express Arôme to its range of Café Crème Express miniature cigars.

Launched earlier in the year, Café Crème Express is smaller than traditional miniature cigars and enhances the adult smoking experience, giving them a true moment of pleasure even if they are time poor or in a restricted venue.

Joining the existing variants, Blue and Original, new Café Crème Express Arôme are available now and packaged in distinctive, crush-proof tins of ten quality cigars that reflect the brands authentic heritage and have a RRP of £3.29.

Café Crème is the market leading brand in the miniature cigar sector, with over 60% of total sales.

James Higgs of Scandinavian Tobacco Group, comments: “We are extremely happy with how adult cigar smokers received Café Crème Express since launch earlier this year and we are pleased to be able to add Arôme and complete the range.

“Café Crème cigars are one of the most iconic brands on the tobacco gantry and instantly recognisable to consumers. Scandinavian Tobacco is constantly exploring products that will help grow the tobacco market and we appreciate all the support we receive from retailers.”


Copyright © 2009 Talkingretail

Every Friday and Saturday night, in Zeeba Lounge, there are belly dancers, Middle Eastern music, crowds both inside and in line outside, and clouds of fragrant smoke.

Zeeba Lounge is, despite the nightclub atmosphere, a one-room hookah bar, one of a handful in Maryland and a rapidly growing nationwide trend despite the hookah’s history of being reserved for maharajas and sultans.

A hookah is a water pipe with a chamber at the top which, usually, holds tobacco, or, because of the state’s Clean Indoor Air act, a tobacco-free substitute, called shisha. On top of this chamber is a sheet of tin foil, upon which is placed a coal to heat the shisha.

Shisha comes in a plethora of flavors, from double apple to a combination of mint and berry to something called “blue mist,” which is the most popular flavor at Arabian Nights, a hookah bar on Light Street in Federal Hill, a block away from Zeeba Lounge.
This story continues below

Two hookah bars, El Basha and the iLounge, have opened this year in Baltimore, and two more have opened in Towson over the last few years.

The secret to the growing success of hookah is the timeless demographic for trendy nightlife – college students.

“They think it’s cool,” said Mohammed Jadoo, co-owner of Arabian Nights. “A lot of people these days are finding out about it, and they’ve started liking it.”

A reason for that line of thinking may be the foreign roots of hookah. It was invented in India and has been popular there and in the Islamic world, especially among aristocrats and royalty, for hundreds of years.

However, there are always risks associated with smoking, even if it’s tobacco-free

“Any time that you’re inhaling smoke into your lungs, there’s an inherent risk there,” said Michelle Bernth of the American Lung Association. “It’s not right to think that just because you’re smoking something natural, it’s OK. Any time that you’re inhaling smoke directly into the soft tissue of your lungs, you’re putting yourself at risk.”

Despite the risks, hookah is growing in popularity among college students. Faizan Ali, a patron of Zeeba Lounge and a student at Loyola College in Maryland, said he thinks he knows why.

“White kids are introduced to it by their cool Arab friends,” said Ali. “It’s more popular among Muslims because they can’t drink, but culturally, people are interested.”

Of course, there might be a simpler explanation still.

“A lot of college kids want to see belly dancing,” Ali added.

However, the probable reason for the allure of hookah bars to young people is that one must be 18, not 21, years old to be admitted.

“It’s not a bar, it’s not a place to drink, it’s a social life outside of their dorm room or apartment,” said Kris Golshan, owner of Zeeba Lounge. “There’s really no other place to go that provides ambiance that they don’t have to be 21 to be in.”

All of the hookah bars in the area are open late – 4 a.m. – which is, according to Jadoo, designed to give the feel of an after-party, since last call at bars in Baltimore is 2 a.m.

Despite their burgeoning popularity and clear-cut target demographics, hookah bars are not cash cows, the owners say.

“I’m not making a living off of it,” Golshan said. “If I didn’t have a day job, there’s no way I’d be able to survive off of the revenue from the hookah lounge.”

Golshan is also director of business development at a Web development company.

Expenses of running a hookah bar like Zeeba Lounge include buying the shisha and hookahs. Shisha can cost up to $80 per kilogram, and a hookah can cost upwards of $50. Attractions like belly dancers are to draw people to the lounge, and don’t bring in any money themselves, Golshan said.

Zeeba Lounge, which opened five years ago, is one of five hookah bars in Baltimore. Before it opened, there were none.

“I think it helps us to have those other hookah bars around,” said Golshan. “Each one of us have different flavors, different moods. When we’re in the trenches, they’re on our side, not our enemies.”

The room is dark. Large fabric prints hang on the walls. It smells, not quite like incense. It is pleasant. Reggae plays loudly.

“I figure I have to play Bob Marley at least once while you are here,” Cloud 9’s manager says.

A group of people is behind a portable screen in one corner – they visit often. Across from them, another group is splayed out over giant pillows on the floor. One man goes it solo, and a couple behind my friends and me appear in their own little love bubble.

My friend comes to this realization: Cloud 9 kind of looks like the basement in “That ’70s Show,” but with more mood lighting.

I was hesitant to enter Cloud 9, the hookah lounge and tobacco shop on Wells Street in Fort Wayne, under the same ownership as The Bean Café and Teahouse next door. “Would everyone think I’m a pothead by default?” I wondered.

Some do enter and ask about marijuana, manager Patty Richards says, but the stuff in the hookah is just tobacco. Flavored tobacco, but tobacco nonetheless.

The extent of my hookah knowledge comes from the caterpillar that smokes one in “Alice in Wonderland,” so Richards and a few hookah Web sites explain how it works: The flavored tobacco, called shisha, is placed in a small ceramic container at the top of the hookah and covered with a metal screen or piece of foil. Cube-like pieces of coal sit atop the screen and indirectly heat the tobacco. A hookah is essentially an overgrown glass pipe. Smokers suck on hoses attached to the hookah’s base. The sucking pulls heat and flavor from the tobacco and mixes it with water bubbling from the pressure in the hookah’s base, producing the smoke-and-vapor mixture that is pulled through the hose by the smoker.

While business at Cloud 9 ranges from nearly empty to having to wait for a seat – especially on Fridays, when live bands play in the lounge, Richards says – others haven’t fared so well.

The Twenty Past Four & More, located on Broadway, had a hookah lounge for about two months, but it closed two weeks ago because it didn’t get much business, says Kevin O’Dor, the tobacco store’s assistant manager.

Richards says she thinks the two closest hookah lounges to Cloud 9 are in Indianapolis and West Lafayette, so the Fort Wayne lounge really has something of a niche market.

Cloud 9 patrons range in age from 18 to 60-something, Richards says, and often when older patrons come in, they comment to Richards, “These aren’t what they used to be.” The implication? That when they were younger and smoking a hookah in the ’70s, it might not have been tobacco in that ceramic container.

Younger patrons often visit for the social aspect of it. The four Fort Wayne men lounging on the overgrown pillows come pretty often. Two, Trevor Walker and Sam Sims, both 18, say they frequent Cloud 9 twice a week.

“I think it’s a very relaxed, mellow atmosphere,” Walker says. “There’s music and always someone to talk to.”

Plus, he likes the taste of it. Walker and his three friends are smoking a coconut and pineapple mixture. For one, Kenny Zuber, 19, it is his first time smoking a hookah.

“I’d smoked cigars before, and that left a weird taste in my mouth,” Zuber says. “This is all right.”

Richards walks by and overhears a question; Zuber had wondered how Cloud 9 got around the smoking ordinance in Fort Wayne.

If a business sells a certain amount of tobacco-related products, it is exempt from that law, Richards says.

Legally, patrons could smoke cigarettes in Cloud 9; however, the management doesn’t allow it. Cigarette smoke smells disgusting, and some people are allergic to it, but hookah vapor doesn’t have such a foul smell, and fewer people have allergies, Richards says.

Hookah smoking is a tradition in the Mideast, Richards says. Merriam-Webster Online dates the term to 1763, from the Arabic “huqqa,” which is the bottle of a water pipe. It can also be called “narghile” or the Persian “ghelune,” according to the Web site The Colors of India, an Indian history and culture site.

While by no means healthy, smoking a hookah is better for one than a cigarette, Richards says.

Not only does shisha not include all the additives of cigarette tobacco, but it also takes longer to smoke; four people can share a hookah for an upward of 40 minutes, she says.

Because of the duration, it’s more difficult to become addicted.

People mainly smoke for the social reasons, both Richards and Walker and his friends attest.

It’s not an addiction, and the vapor is remarkably smooth, as this reporter can say for certain. I had never smoked anything – not even a cigarette – so I expected to hack up a lung after taking a puff or two from the Cloud 9 hookah.

I didn’t cough at all; I simply enjoyed the delicious coconut-flavored shisha.

© Journalgazette

You’ve heard of e-mails and e-cards but what about e-cigarettes? It might sound strange but battery powered cigarettes are already in many Midwest states. And despite some controversy with health groups, they’re proving popular with smokers.

For many smokers, the sound of a lighter is all too familiar. But it might become a sound of the past, as one company wants to change the way some smokers light up.

“Electronic cigarette. It’s an alternative version of smoking,” distributor Mike Wehrkamp said.

An e-cigarette looks, feels and tastes just like the real thing but it’s the smoke you’re seeing that’s different.

“When you do see smoke, you’re seeing a vapor,” Wehrkamp said.

Distributors of the brand Smoke 51 say that vapor is a major asset. Because 25 states have put smoking bans in place, Wehrkamp says an odorless cigarette could be an alternative.

“It’s no smell, and it’s so they can smoke it bars, casinos, in their business,” Wehrkamp said.

With a cartridge of nicotine, Wehrkamp says users aren’t getting most of the ingredients real cigarettes carry.

“You’re not getting all the other additives and everything like you are in cigarettes. Just smoking straight nicotine,” Wehrkamp said.

The leven of nicotine is adjustable, with 12 being the highest level and zero the lowest.

“When you smoke a cigarette, you light it and it feels like you have to smoke the whole thing. Here, you’ll take two to three puffs and your brain will say got enough nicotine,” Wehrkamp said.

Just like a cell phone, the kit comes with a home charger. Charge the e-cigarette overnight and it’s good for up to 8 hours.

Comparable to the cost of 2 packs of cigarette, Wehrkamp says people are buying.

“The response has been great right now,” Wehrkamp said.

The American Lung Association, along with other health organizations, has called for the cigarettes to be removed from the market, saying they have yet to be proven safe. The Food and Drug Administration has stopped shipments at the border earlier this year because of safety concerns.
© Keloland

The future of menthol cigarettes, smoked by 12 million Americans and 75 percent of African American smokers, could be the next flashpoint in a decades-long campaign against smoking in the United States.

Last week, Congress passed a bill giving the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products. President Barack Obama is expected to sign it into law soon.

The bill outlawed flavorings like chocolate, cherry and cloves that can attract young people to start smoking — but excluded menthol, by far the most popular flavoring accounting for around 27 percent of the cigarette market.

Under the bill, the FDA must study the medical effects and marketing of menthol and its impact on blacks, Hispanics and other groups and report within 18 months. In theory, the FDA could then move to ban menthol cigarettes but some anti-smoking activists are skeptical the agency will do so.

“I am pessimistic that menthol will be banned,” said Dr. Joel Nitzkin of the American Association of Public Health Physicians, who described the bill as a fraud.

Some anti-smoking groups wanted the ban on flavored cigarettes to include menthol but were told repeatedly that would kill the bill, said William Robinson of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network.

Tobacco industry lobbyists influenced some legislators, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, to accept what amounted to a soft compromise for menthol, he said.

“They buy influence when you have the deep pockets the tobacco industry has,” Robinson said. Other anti-smoking groups denied lobbyists influenced legislators to gain a more favorable outcome for companies that produce menthol brands.
FIRST STEP TO OUTLAW SMOKING?

Short of a complete ban at the end of its study, the FDA could order menthol cigarettes to be phased out, or it could preserve the status quo, said a Democratic aide on the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee.

Lawmakers banned other flavored tobacco products because they could act “as a gateway product … aimed at trying to get kids to start smoking,” the aide said.

But the government needed more time to study the implications of a possible ban or restrictions on menthol, said Paul Billings of the American Lung Association.

“We don’t know what the public response would have been to banning a product so many people are addicted to. Do they switch to another product? Get it another way?” he asked.

Any decision down the line by the FDA to restrict or ban menthol could hurt Lorillard, the top menthol cigarette manufacturer, whose products include Newport, the leading seller among U.S. blacks.

In an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, Lorillard called the bill a first step to outlaw smoking completely.

The ad said the FDA was the wrong agency to regulate tobacco and the bill would not only boost a black market but make it harder for companies to develop safer products.

Still, Lorillard said it would provide “appropriate information” to the FDA report on menthol.

“We hope the FDA will solicit and consider input and comments from industry participants,” said Lorillard spokesman Michael Robinson. “We look forward to a process that is grounded in the sound scientific information available today.”

Around 20 percent of adult black Americans smoke, the same rate as the rest of the population, according to 2007 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Black smokers suffer more from smoking-related illnesses and death than their white counterparts, possibly because of inferior access to good medical care. There is little evidence that smoking menthol cigarettes is itself more dangerous than non-flavored brands, public health experts said.

But anti-smoking activists say menthol’s mild anesthetic property masks the harshness of tobacco making it easier to start smoking and harder to quit.

In the past, cigarettes were more respected than today. Today they are considered the main cause of people’s deaths. For example in1950s America cigarette smoking was the abstract of Cool and Glamour.
Even screen beauties such as Audrey Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich made smoking look sensual and sophisticated. By the late 1950s around half of the population of industrialized nations smoked. Then the tobacco product was cheap, legal and socially acceptable.

Cigarettes were originally sold as expensive handmade luxury goods for the urban elite. It was not until mass-production methods coupled with aggressive marketing that the industry began to see off traditional pipe-smoking and tobacco-chewing habits, particularly in the United States.
In the past the most famous American Tobacco Firm was Philip Morris. The most important message of this company was this “For man’s flavor come to Marlboro Country.”
Other brands also sought to lessen fears of smoking. For example, Camel cigarette famously ran an advert saying: “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette”.
Still, for years, the tobacco industry appeared to be unconquerable. Then, in 1994, Diane Castano, whose husband died of lung cancer, sued the Tobacco Industry.
After that case Health Organizations started to protect non-smokers from being exposed to secondhand smoking. This led to the 1995 ban on smoking in most enclosed places of employment. By 2005 less than a quarter of the US population smoked cigarettes, and that is now falling.
Although the behaviors and attitudes of family and friends are the main influences on adolescent decisions to use tobacco, the media—films, television, and the Internet— also influence these decisions. And most tobacco use took place in enclosed areas, usually around nonsmokers.