Al Brierly watched his father and grandfather toil on their Kentucky tobacco farms, so he wanted nothing to do with the family business after being discharged from the Army in the early ’50s.

Nearly 60 years later, the Belleville retiree is giddy with excitement about four tobacco plants growing in his backyard.

“He sits out here (at a patio table) and drinks his coffee and admires his tobacco plant every morning,” said Elaine Brierly, his wife of 52 years. “That’s my competition. He doesn’t sit with me in the kitchen anymore.”
Tobacco plant growing in man’s yard Tobacco plant growing in man’s yard Tobacco plant growing in man’s yard Tobacco plant growing in man’s yard
Al Brierly of Belleville with his tall tobacco plant that has reached 10′ 2″ and is still growing. – Tim Vizer/BND

Elaine was referring to one plant in particular that towers above the rest. It’s more than 10 feet tall with platter-size green leaves and dainty pink and white flowers shooting from the top.

“Everybody who sees it wants a seed,” said Al, 83, a retired machine-shop foreman with International Lighting Manufacturing Co. “It’s got a beautiful bloom on it.”

Tobacco cultivation originated in the tropics, but today it’s grown in subtropical and temperate regions. Most tobacco in the United States is grown in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and South Carolina.Al got reacquainted with tobacco last May, when he and Elaine traveled to Kentucky to visit family. His nephew’s son, Charles Sparks, gave him five small plants.

“I just wanted to see if it would grow,” said Al, who gave one plant to a neighbor and put the rest in his flower garden, under the watchful eye of a Madonna statue.

Japanese beetles have nipped at the leaves, but the tobacco seems to be doing well in its new environment.

“The hummingbirds love (the tall plant),” Al said. “They’re out here sucking nectar out of the blossoms every morning.”

The Brierlys live in Chenot Place. They have three grown daughters and five grandchildren.

Family ties to tobacco date back to 1870, when Al’s grandparents, Robert and Rebecca Brierly, married and began farming near Carlisle, Ky.

“When they took up housekeeping, they carried all their belongings in a wash tub, and they had a shotgun and a dog,” Al said. “And when (Robert) died in the middle 1930s, he willed each of his seven children a 100-acre farm. He did very good for not having anything when he started.”

Al’s parents, Arthur and Bessie Brierly, continued the family tradition. He remembers his father making cigars by rolling leaves full of shredded tobacco around wires that were pulled out to create air passages.

“It’s pretty strong stuff,” Al said. “It’ll make you sick if you’re not careful.”

Arthur sold his farm in the early 1950s. His children wanted to pursue other employment.

“(Tobacco farming) is hard work, really hard work,” Al said. “It’s not that I’m lazy, but there are easier ways to make a living.”

Al smoked a pipe until 1991, when he suffered a heart attack. Now he enjoys a cigar about once a month.

Al can’t wait to make cigars with his own tobacco after harvesting it at the end of September. He’ll hang leaves to dry under an awning, then wait for a good rain to make them damp and pliable.

“That (plant) is his pride and joy,” his wife said.

MIAMI—As the gateway to the Americas, Miami is home to restaurants, shops and streets that feel as though you’ve stepped off one continent and onto another. Shots of Cuban coffee are available almost anywhere in Miami’s Little Havana, including convenience stores. In certain areas, everyone greets customers with “hola,” never “hello.”

Tourists might not be able to navigate Latin Miami successfully using only English, so brush up on basic Spanish before going, or take a Spanish-speaking friend. Regardless, a trip to Miami is incomplete without a nod to its Latin flavor.

Here are some essential stops in and around Little Havana:

— CASA UNIDOS DE ELIAN—It’s the house where Elian Gonzalez stayed when the then 5-year-old Cuban boy was at the center of an international custody battle. The standoff ended when U.S. agents raided the home and seized him in 2000 and sent him back to Cuba with his father. The home has been renovated by his uncle, turned into a combination shrine and museum. Toys, photos and drawings are lined up in glass display cases.

Elian’s clothes still hang in the closet, and the holes where agents kicked in the door haven’t been repaired. The inner tube he came to Miami in hangs on the wall, accompanied by a sign in English and Spanish: “This is the tragedy of a nation that wants to live in freedom … Whose fault? A tyrant.” The house (2319 N.W. Second St.) is open whenever someone is home, so it’s hit-or-miss since there’s no public phone number. Admission is free; donations are accepted.

— DOMINO PARK—At Domino Park (S.W. Eighth Street and 15th Avenue), signs warn players not to drink, smoke or bet. The domino tables have drink-holders anyway, to make them look like the domino parks in Cuba, but they’re empty. Dozens of old men wearing sunglasses and caps speak Spanish as they play under tents, interrupted by the sounds of clattering domino pieces. Watch and enjoy—but don’t interrupt a game to ask questions, or you risk irritating the players.

— EL TITAN DE BRONZE CIGARS—Named after a Cuban general, this family-owned cigar company has been in business since 1995. At the store, almost any type of cigar is for sale, ranging from about $4.65 to $13 for the longest. Employees roll cigars in the middle of the shop (1071 S.W. Eighth St., 305-860-1412) using hand cream to soften the wrapper, and some even smoke as they roll.

— EL PALACIO DE LOS JUGOS—One employee said El Palacio De Los Jugos (The Juice Palace) is what a Cuban market was like during the island’s golden days. Always chaotic, the market (5721 W. Flagler St., 305-264-4557) sells almost any type of Cuban food, drink or produce imaginable. At the front counter, blocks of cheese and guava sit in a glass case. Someone chops pork rinds with a machete. A machine spits slices of plantains into a vat of oil. Juices, the main attraction, are $2 per cup and $7 for half a gallon. The mamey juice is the most popular, a thick juice that tastes a little like papaya or guava. But papaya and guava juices are also available, as well as pineapple, carrot, beet, and other combinations.

— LA MOON—This Venezuelan restaurant is popular with the post-clubbing crowd: Thursday through Saturday, it’s open from 8 a.m. to 6 a.m. and until at least midnight every day except Sunday. Have an arepa con queso—cheese between two corn pancakes—or a Supermoon Perro,

— LA CARRETA—Whether La Carreta has the best Cuban food in Miami is debatable. It’s a citywide casual-dining chain, like the Red Lobster of Cuban food in Miami. But for cheap prices—most entrees are about $7—La Carreta (3632 S.W. Eighth St., 305-444-7501) serves big portions of authentic food in an equally authentic atmosphere, much like the Versailles across the street, aptly described in one travel guide as offering “mucho helpings of Cuban kitsch.”

Brave the lunchtime crowds to watch the old-school Cuban crowd eat lunch and have cafecitos (Cuban coffees), surrounded by a loud buzz of Spanish.

HADLEY, Mass. — Take the MassPike west until it drops into the Connecticut River Valley around Hadley on down to Southwick, and you land at the home of one of Massachusetts’ little-known historic crops.

“A lot of people don’t realize that we produce some of the finest cigar wrappers in the world,” says farmer Allan Zuchowski.

Zuchowski descends from the Polish immigrants who started growing tobacco commercially here during the Civil War, when the North needed a new supply. Turns out the normally sweltering, muggy summers in this hazy valley are ideal for cultivating the broadleaf variety that’s wound around cigars.

“Today is perfect,” Zuchowski says, looking out across his farm. “Hot and humid, exactly what this crop likes. But it was damaged when we had the cool and the cloudy and the wet.”

Zuchowski shows the damage by walking through his field, plucking what should be deep green leaves that are as big as a broadsheet newspaper. But some leaves are stunted and furled inward. Others bear blotches of pale green. And still more are dinged with brown speckles.

All from a variety of plant diseases that thrived in the cool, damp weather when these tobacco plants were young and weak.

“This is an advanced case of the disease, and that is just not a good leaf” Zuchowski says, ripping it from the plant.

“A cigar wrapper has to burn evenly, otherwise the cigar won’t work properly,” he adds. “This will cure brittle and dry and these small spots, they will fall out. So you’ll have a leaf peppered with holes, and it’ll be totally useless as a wrapper.”

Zuchowski’s crop is ruined. “All my life, this is the worst,” he says. “And I can say probably the same for my neighbors around me.”

Joe Czajkowski farms up the road from Zuchowski. He only knows of one area farmer who’s going to harvest any tobacco this summer. “It was like the perfect storm for tobacco,” Czajkowski says. “It’s a goner. The crop is just not marketable to any company. There’s no quality there.”

Ted Smiarowski of the federal Farm Service Agency says three-quarters of the Massachusetts tobacco crop is a total loss. “The sad part, too, is that a lot of locals work on these farms for jobs,” Smiarowski says, “and they’re not working this year on them. Because there’s nothing to harvest.”

That means less money spent at Sofia’s Polish-American Café in Hadley, where kapusta and kielbasa warm on the stove. Owner Kristina Beaudry, born Nikonczyk, says her healthy plates are popular among the college and high-school kids who earn around eight bucks an hour tending to the labor intensive rows of tobacco. Two of her sons are on those crews, too.

“The high school kids and stuff, they’ll come in here and order just six, eight pirogues at a time to eat,” Beaudry says. “Gives ‘em energy, go back to work.”

Not this summer. Some of the larger farms here that hire seasonal workers from Jamaica have sent them home already. While tobacco may be the hardest hit, other crops are having a tough go of it right now, too.

“They need some sun and some dry weather to kind of get things moving,” says Lorie Warren, who monitors New England weather and crops for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She says the cool, moist weather has given Massachusetts farmers an enduring headache.

“You know the tomato crop’s been hit by blight, which is exacerbated by wet conditions. Mold grows on your berries. If the ground doesn’t dry out, then you can’t get your farm equipment into the fields to cultivate,” Warren says. “So you’ve got slugs running rampant, you’ve got bugs going crazy because they can get in there. You know as soon as you spray, it turns right around and rains and everything goes away and you have to run in there and do it all over again.”

Even with warmer weather this week and last, Warren says it’s still below average — it should be even hotter right now. Unless it dries out soon, more Massachusetts crops could face the same fate as tobacco.

Pulling out damaged leaves on his Hadley farm, Allan Zuchowski is thankful that he bought crop insurance this year. It means he will plow his tobacco under and receive a modest settlement. If he hadn’t paid for insurance, he’d have sell his specialty crop as scrap-grade tobacco.

Those broad leaves, cultivated to wrap around the finest cigars, would end up in cheap chew. “This is supposed to be the highest, the champagne of the tobacco industry,” Zuchowski says. “And we’d be producing gut-rot.”

Other Massachusetts farmers with other crops still in the field are hoping for better weather to avoid such an insult on top of economic injury.


© Wbur

General Tobacco announced Thursday it will produce to new pipe product line extension to its two flagship brands, Bronco and GT One.

“We are very excited to provide pipe smokers with a variety of alternatives,” said J. Ronald Denman, vice president and general counsel for Mayodan-based General Tobacco. “The brand is competitively priced in the pipe tobacco market segment, especially during these economic times when our customers are seeking value.”

GT also recently introduced Wrangler, a new brand of filtered cigars.

All the new products will be manufactured at the company’s facilities in Mayodan.

Do you like cigars? Do you like smoking cigars on the golf course? How about a tournament scramble sponsored by a local cigar shop?

The 11th annual Edward’s Tobacco Shop Invitational incorporates all three and will be held at The Ranch Country Club in Westminster on Monday, July 27.

Entry fee is $135 and includes breakfast, lunch, four cigars, door prizes, greens fees and range balls.

The four-man scramble format will start at 8 a.m. and breakfast begins at 7 a.m.

The Ranch Country Club is located at 120th Avenue and Tejon Street.

Call 303-781-7662 for more information. Entry deadline is July 16.

© Examiner

Two years ago, Oregon legislators banned smoking from bars, expanded smoke-free workplace laws and passed a big tax on cigarettes to pay for health care for uninsured kids.

But this year, the state’s budget problems have stolen the spotlight and another attempt to raise taxes on cigarettes is dead.

The outcome is a sharp contrast to the beginning of the session, which saw a bevy of bills targeting cigarettes, smokeless and chewing tobacco – and smoking in general. The tobacco lobby, which spent a record $12 million to persuade Oregon voters in 2007 to kill the last cigarette tax proposal by the Legislature, scored some more victories this time around.

“The question was how many tax bills would we be able to take,” says Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland. “We were battling uphill from the beginning.”

Besides the cigarette tax, however, Rep. Carolyn Tomei, D-Milwaukie, and others said lawmakers got some small wins against tobacco this session.

“We did a lot in 2007,” says Tomei. “We passed some really good legislation, and now we’re just finishing up.”

For one, Congress and President Barack Obama increased the federal tax on cigarettes by 60 cents this spring. With that increase, the average price of a pack of cigarettes is $5.02. Of the $5.02, $1.01 is federal tax and $1.18 is state tax.

Democrats worried about too many tax increases. Legislators feared a cigarette tax hike would end up before voters again.

Mark Nelson, a lobbyist for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., calls the cigarette tax failure “the big victory” of the session.

Sen. Larry George, R-Sherwood, disputes the reach of the tobacco bills passed this session and says that bills such as the vending machine ban “are bills seeking headlines.”

“They don’t make a lot of public policy sense,” he says, adding that few of them were proved necessary with data. George disagrees with taxes on beer and cigarettes because he says they target working-class Oregonians.

“You don’t hear about a wine tax, do you?” he says. “That’s why these things are dying.”

Nelson says the Senate lacked the votes to pass the cigarette tax increase. Even if it did, he says, the tobacco industry would have taken the measure to the voters.

In November 2007, voters rejected the “Healthy Kids” plan, a measure to amend the state constitution that would have raised a tax on a pack of cigarettes by 84.5 cents to cover the cost of health insurance for children.

This year, Rep. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, says it was more a matter of circumstance – not lobbying – that killed the 60-cents-a-pack tax.

“In the end, this was not the right session for the tobacco tax,” she said. “We pursued other things. It’s not about anything the tobacco industry or the tobacco lobby did.”

Nelson and Gelser do agree on something: The cigarette tax bill is likely to return in February.

Most tobacco bills that did pass this session either limited minors’ access to tobacco or addressed the rising popularity of smokeless tobacco.

With the smoke-free workplace laws, tobacco companies have increasingly marketed smokeless products. Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds and others target the young audience with candy-tasting flavors and in cell phone-shaped dispensers.

Portland is one of three test markets for smokeless tobacco because of its young, hip reputation and its free-sample-friendly laws, according to Dr. Mel Kohn, acting public health director for Oregon.

With the passage of the moist snuff bill, smokeless tobacco will be taxed by weight, with a $2.14 minimum per container. Under the law, tobacco companies must abide by youth marketing restrictions or pay an additional 40 cents a can.

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Altria, the parent company of Phillip Morris USA, said the company testified in favor of this change.

In Oregon, statistics show that young people buy smokeless tobacco at a higher rate than adults. According to state reports from 2007, nearly 4 percent of Oregon adults used smokeless tobacco, as did more than 8 percent of Oregon 11th-graders.

Dana Kaye, executive director of the American Lung Association of Oregon, calls smokeless tobacco “the wave of the future” for the tobacco industry as indoor clean air laws are passed around the country.

Statistics show youths taking up smokeless tobacco at a higher rate than adults.

“Raising the price of cigarettes is a way to get people to quit and help prevent kids from starting,” Kohn says, deeming it the “biggest disappointment” of the session.

George says that it is a slippery slope to punish people through taxes “for bad choices” because eating fast food and skiing can be dangerous, too. A Centers for Disease Control study reports that young adults are two to three times more sensitive to price changes than other adults.

“I’ll never give up on the tax,” Kaye says. “We haven’t seen the end of their marketing, which means you haven’t seen the end of our legislative work.”
© Oregonlive

Today is World No Tobacco Day. Are you aware of Snus, Orbs, Ariva, Quest, Dreams, Eclipse, Liquid Zoo, Revel and Hard Snuff?

The health profession is holding its own in the war against tobacco. Unfortunately, you may not recognize the tobacco of the next generation. To counter our declining smoking rates and growing restrictions on smoking, the tobacco industry is unleashing the above mentioned new products.

Many new tobacco products are being falsely marketed with unproven and misleading claims that they are safer than traditional cigarettes. “ Light,” “mild” and “low tar” represent these misleading claims.

Previous to this, on April 8, the Phoenix editorial board did not support FDA regulation of the tobacco industry. Not one for big government or a lot of laws or regulations, I would usually agree.

But today, I feel compelled to speak to the science of tobacco addiction and the marketing trends of the tobacco industry.

Enough is enough!

America, and Muskogee, wake up. Choose a healthy lifestyle. Support regulation of the tobacco industry.

Having reviewed the online report www.tobaccofreekids.org, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, I concur with the findings that an unregulated tobacco industry is experimenting to the detriment of American kids and consumers.

Tobacco row is developing new products recruiting new youth users, creating and sustaining addiction, and discouraging quitting.

Flavored tobacco makes these products more appealing to kids. Candy, fruit and alcohol flavors are being used to change the harshness of traditional tobacco. These products are of candy-like form and easy to conceal, making it easy for children to obtain and abuse. Novel smokeless tobacco allows a smoker to sustain their addiction in smoke-free environments. Tobacco companies have been maintaining addiction among smokers and addicting a new generation by increasing the nicotine levels in their products. Thus, additional ingredients or chemicals may lead to more addictiveness and a possible increase in carcinogens.

I believe that without FDA regulation of tobacco products; consumers will remain unprotected and more people will die.

The natural rebuttal is that we all are knowledgeable about tobacco and its negative effects on our health. Unknown to the consumers, new products and ingredients make unproven health claims without regard for the impact on public health.

Tobacco companies have targeted the African-American market with menthol cigarettes as menthol numbs the throat and allows deeper inhaling. Eighty percent of 12-17-year-old black smokers choose Newport, the leading menthol brand, compared with 16 percent of young white smokers. Menthol cigarettes are associated with a greater absorption of nicotine and research suggests that the mentholated cigarettes may increase the risk of lung and bronchial cancer.

Is this successful tobacco marketing? You bet it is.

More African Americans will develop and die from cancer than any other racial group.

Source: Muskogeephoenix

These models dressed in wonderful outfits looked appealing to customers. Especially young people watched these elegant people puff leisurely on a cigarette, and it was hard for them to imagine that this habit could be harmful. After all, these people looked better than the average person on the street.

The facts about smoking did not come out until it was too late for many of these people because the nicotine in the cigarettes they bought was highly addictive. They were hooked to an addictive, destructive habit. Smokers paid the cigarette companies thousands of dollars every year because they bought into the idea that smoking was glamorous. The effects of smoking were not immediately apparent, and they did not want to quit smoking because the facts did not matter. Many of these people did not know the awful facts about smoking cigarettes. Some knew that they should quit smoking because the facts were available to them, but the addiction was too strong for them.

Many Quit smoking When the Facts Emerged

Smokers could feel harmful effects as they smoked, but many tried to quit smoking when the facts became available to the public. Investigators found out that the companies tried to hide the facts and strengthen the nicotine in cigarettes for a tighter grip on customers. Smokers tried to quit smoking when these facts were published in newspapers around the world. Medical researchers conducted studies that showed the harmful effects of smoking on the various organs of the body. Other researchers showed that people in the room with a smoker could be damaged by second hand smoke.

Some smokers quit smoking when learning about the effects on their health, but some quit when they found out about the effects on their loved ones. Mothers who learned about the effects of smoking on their babies were compelled by their maternal instincts to stop. They quit smoking when the facts were published about the birth weight of children born to smokers. Others quit smoking when they learned that second hand smoke could harm all of the people in their household

I wasn’t surprised that a high court in the U.S. finally found the Tobacco Companies guilty of fraudulently advertising a very lethal drug which kills about 400,000 people each year and that is just the U.S.

The world total may be as high as 10 million. Who knows and who is counting? Why did it take 150 years?

Tobacco was once touted as a medicine helpful for coughing up guck from one’s lungs. That guck was caused by the nicotine and the cancer causing tars from smoked tobacco.

By the way, nicotine, the drug in tobacco is extremely lethal. Field workers harvesting tobacco leaves can get enough nicotine on their clothing which is easily absorbed thru the skin and can cause death proceeded by some awful sweating, nausea, vomiting, dry heaves and severe diarrhea.

Many children (and adults) have died from eating a few cigarettes or maybe half a cigar. Some tobacco products have delicious flavors and what is the hazard of its slightly bitter taste – only death.

I have said nicotine is a drug. Folk medicine used tobacco spit on cuts and scratches. It would have been better to use even dirty water. It was also used as an intestinal worm killer, as an enema etc, but along with worms it frequently killed the person.

Nicotine is definitely a drug. At first it stimulates the adrenal gland to produce Adrenaline which is a total body stimulant. Simultaneously the Adrenaline causes an increase in blood glucose from the liver. Adrenaline and glucose give smokers the warm fuzzy feeling but every “coffin nail” puts one closer to death by cancer.

Another bad effect of smoked and chewed tobacco is various and sundry cancers on the lips, tongue and vocal cords – bad!

Tobacco is native to North America and was discovered by the Spanish and Portuguese who thought it was a fine exotic substance and brought it home about 1550. It got to the rest of Europe soon after and it was so addicting that various governments found they could tax it and make lots and lots of money. After all there is only about one cents worth of tobacco in a cigarette.

Tobacco smoke has its own warning system. The Germans smoked very strong Turkish tobacco and we could smell them down wind for miles.

One of the real social and medical mysteries in the U.S. is that many consider cannabis cigarettes as dangerous as tobacco cigarettes.

This is really strange because cannabis in any form has never killed anyone and has been used for medicine for about 5000 years. Tobacco has been extensively used for about 500 years and has killed millions.

Source: Salem-news