Orange Bowled Over by Frank Seltzer
A couple of weeks ago, Camacho cigars announced that if you were going to the Orange Bowl, you would be able to light up. Now, not so much.
Camacho Cigars signed a three-year deal as a corporate sponsor of the Miami based bowl game. There were plans for there to be on-site Camacho lounges where you could smoke. According to the company’s release,
At the Orange Bowl Game Day Fan Zone, the Orange Bowl’s largest pre-game event, guests can relax before kickoff in a beautifully appointed Camacho Club Lounge. There will also be two cigar lounges located in the designated smoking areas of the stadium on the Club Level for attendees of the Orange Bowl VIP pre-game party.
Dylan Austin—the head of marketing for Camacho—said since Camacho’s roots are in south Florida it was an honor to be partnered with such a class operation. Well maybe the honor ain’t so hot and certainly not a lot of class.
Late last week, a bunch of health groups (including Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and the American Cancer Society) started pressuring the Orange Bowl to drop the sponsorship. (It is for the kids don’t you know.)
On Thursday, three Democratic Senators jumped on the bandwagon (Lautenberg of NJ, Durbin of IL and Blumenthal of CT). They wrote to both the Orange Bowl and the NCAA saying the sponsorship should be dropped. By Friday, the bowl officials and NCAA responded to the congressional pressure and kicked Camacho out. (Wonder who will reimburse Camacho ?)
Durbin, btw, is the one who exempted menthol from “flavored” cigarettes that are banned and tobacco control advocate Michael Siegel calls this more hypocracy. In the articles it was noted that while cigarettes and smokeless tobacco sponsorships are banned for sporting events under the 2009 law which turned tobacco over to the FDA, cigars are not. Read YET. If you have not done so get behind the Cigar Rights of America or the IPCPR to pass H.R. 1639 / S. 1461. They are not going to stop until they control cigars.
Smoking bans worldwide
If you think it is tough here, pity poor Jose Blanco over at Joya de Nicaragua. He was touring Eastern Europe and wanted to do his famous blending session for about 50 cigar smokers just before Christmas. In the U-S, Jose usually does them at cigar shops…in Eastern Europe he had to use the Slovakian Embassy because he could not find another place to allow smoking. Diplomatic immunity does have its perks.
But there is good news in the Netherlands where it is getting easier to smoke. Last year, the country eased restrictions against tobacco and now it is planning on cutting anti-smoking advertising, funding programs for people to stop smoking (i.e. sell more stop smoking drugs) and stop funding its national center on tobacco control. The Netherlands seemingly is one country not to be bullied. Of course it is making the anti’s crazy.
Another Factory Gone
Red Lion's cigar band
Red Lion, Pennsylvania, used to be one of the biggest manufacturers of cigars in the United States making over 400-million cigars a year in the early 20th century or about 20 percent of all the cigars made in the U-S. In 1900 the town was home to 30 cigar factories and over 160 home based operations. Cigars were so much a part of the town that every New Year’s Eve it welcomes the new year by raising a cigar. Alas, this year when the cigar goes up it will do so in a town now without any cigar factories.
Van Slyke Cigar Factory
Many of the factories made cigars of which you have never heard. Maud Muller, Southern Club, Sun Maid were some of the brands. But Harry and David Wolf called Red Lion home and began making cigars there around 1898. Most of their brands have faded into obscurity, but the Wolf Brothers Rum Soaked Crooks –their hit– it still sold today.
Van Slyke and Horton, the town’s last remaining factory, closed earlier this year. Said the chairman of the Red Lion New Year’s Even Committee, it is a shame. Too true.
Bye Hitch
Christopher Hitchens is dead. Hitchens was an essayist and class A skeptic. He wrote about ignorance and folly. Many know him for his political works and for his latest best seller against religion, God is Not Great. But Hitchens also was a life-long smoker and for that people will most likely attribute his cancer. He never saw it that way. But he was very much opposed to the smoking bans and the idiocy of them. In 2004, Hitch gave a speech on Bloomberg’s Nanny state.
When the complete ban on smoking in all public places was enacted in California, I called up the assemblyman who wrote the legislation and I said: “I’ve just discovered that bars are not going to be able to turn themselves into a club for the evening and charge a buck for admission for people who want to have a cigarette. You won’t be able to have a private club. You won’t even be able to have a smoke-easy, if you will, in California.”
And he said, “That’s right.”
I said, “Well, how can you possibly justify that?”
And he said, “Well, it’s to protect the staff. It’s labor protection legislation. We don’t want someone who doesn’t want to smoke, who doesn’t like it, having to work in a smoky bar.”
And I said, “You don’t think that if there were bars that allowed it and bars that forbade it, that, sooner or later people would apply for the jobs they preferred, and it would sort of shake out?”
He replied, “No. We could not make that assumption.”
So we have to postulate the existence, if you will, of a nonexistent person in a nonexistent dilemma: the person who can find only one job, and that job is as barkeep in a smoking bar. This person must be held to exist, though he or she is notional. But everyone who actually does exist must act as if this person is real.
My editor, Graydon Carter, the splendid editor of Vanity Fair, and I were having a cigarette in his office. And someone on our staff—it’s not very nice to think about it—was kind enough to drop a dime on us. And round the guys came. “You’re busted!” These people are paid by the city, which evidently has no better use for its police.
I think that’s bad enough. But then Graydon went on holiday, and I went back to Washington. And his office was empty. But they came round again and they issued him another ticket because he had on his desk an object that could have been used as an ashtray. In his absence. With no one smoking. But there are officials who have time enough to come round and do that.
His clarity will be greatly missed.
Have a Happy New Year.
