Flavorless in New York City by Steve Nathan
Friday, March 8th, 2013All of you “New Joisey” commuters and native “New Yawkers” may already know that, in October of 2009, the Big Apple’s mayor created an ordinance that restricts the sale of flavored tobaccos throughout the whole city. So, if you’re looking to purchase some “Jamaican Me Crazy” aromatic pipe tobacco or a cognac-flavored corona, you’re in for a big shock.
Per New York City’s health commissioner, “Flavored-tobacco products are marketed to youth, their packaging resembling that of candy and gum, and young people are more likely than adults to try flavored-tobacco products. This law, one of the first of its kind in the country, ensures that youth will be protected from these harmful products.”
Okay, I can understand if the honorable doctor was referring specifically to the monitored sale of those cheapo candy-store flavored blunts sitting on the front counter at the local Quickie Mart and are many times irresponsibly sold to underage smokers with fake IDs, because I sure don’t see a market for those amongst the old farts that enjoy a good machine made cigar. And I surely can’t imagine my 93-year-old Uncle Irving enjoying a blueberry stogie after downing a bagel with a shmear: “Oy vey! What’s up with these farkakte flavors? Where the hell is my Dutch Masters?”
Regulating Tobacco
So, yes, I can see regulating such blatant unregulated abuse of tobacco. But to make a sweeping bill that affects allflavored pipe tobaccos and cigars, no matter where or how they are sold, is pure stupidity that just adds another nail in the coffin for those poor tobacconists that have already been kicked in the cajones with a 75% tobacco surcharge in thecity that never sleeps!
This is just another example of government telling us what to do. For our own health, the King of Manhattan decided he was going to fight obesity as the New York City Health Department became the first in the nation to ban the sale of sugared beverages exceeding 16 ounces at restaurants, mobile food carts, sports arenas and movie theaters. Well, guess what? If I consume four triple cheeseburgers and a bag of Cheetos with my “healthier” eight-ounce soda, I’m still going to eventually be fat enough to have my own zip code! And admit it, most very corpulent (lard-ass) people wash down their bucket of chicken with a diet soda anyway. Perhaps it makes them feel less guilty… but I digress!
Let’s get back to the flavored-tobacco ban. Show me one pimply kid living with his parents and making $120 a week bagging groceries who is walking into a fine tobacco shop and dropping 10 bucks on a Maker’s Mark bourbon cigar, complete with glass tube and fancy melted-wax cap. No way, fella! He’s headed to that Quickie Mart for a 65¢ blueberry dog rocket so he can smoke Latin lettuce in his bedroom without his mom smelling anything suspicious. And he certainly isn’t going to take his whole paycheck and buy an $85.00 Savinelli pipe and a tin of Mac Baren Cherry Cavendish to start his spiral into the depths of tobacco addiction: Unsatisfied by smoking just cherry pipe tobacco, he turns to marijuana, the gateway drug to opiates. And when the opiates become too expensive, he hocks his Savinelli pipe for a bag of crack. And sadly, when he is living in a cardboard box behind the Home Depot, he will forever regret that first bowl of Mac Baren Cherry Cavendish…
Luckily things are a little better across the pond in “Joisey,” where our main man hasn’t seen his shoes since 1983; we are still allowed the guilty pleasure of negotiating a giant Slurpee while loading our pipes with gobs of gooey-casing goodness or smoking any flavored cigar that our hearts desire.
Mr. Mayor, there are much bigger problems to tackle in your city. And one day, if you’re not too busy, maybe you can put on a gas mask and walk into one of your local tobacco shops to see for yourself that you are depriving responsible adults their freedom of choice to enjoy flavored tobaccos… as they have for many years before you interceded. And guess what? I’m also sure you won’t find any nicotine-starved young folks drooling over a jar of vanilla pipe tobacco and begging for a fix.
