Hello Foundry by Frank Seltzer
Last month, we told you about Michael Giannini’s new role at General Cigar as Creative Director. Giannini had been working with La Gloria Cubana since 2000. We mentioned his new cigar was Foundry, well it hits stores this week and next.
Foundry is a very limited edition steampunk smoke and the idea came from Giannini who often dresses like a steampunker in Victorian, yet modern clothes. Foundry is unique in that it uses no tobacco from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico or Indonesia. The company will not say much about the blend, except that is uses 5 tobaccos from 4 different countries and one of those is the wrapper, a Connecticut grown H47 Pleno Sol leaf that is 8 to 10 years old. The cigar itself is hard to describe because the tobaccos are so unique. Says Giannini, “When we were smoking these we were dumbfounded, we could not describe these tobaccos and how they actually synched together.
The cigar comes in four sizes with each named for historical figures from the nineteenth century. The Wells (6”x 50, SRP per cigar is $7.95) is for H.G. Wells author of The Time Machine. The Lovelace (6 ¼ ” x 54, SRP per cigar is $8.45) is for Lady Lovelace — an English mathematician, the only legitimate child of Lord Byron and known for her work on Charles Babbage’s mathematical computer. The Talbot (5” x 60, SRP per cigar is $8.95) is named for Henry Fox Talbot who was a photographic pioneer. The Cayley (6 ½” x 60 x 56 x 43, SRP per cigar is $9.45) is named for George Cayley the father of aerodynamics.
Punch it up
Punch's Tailgating Pack
Speaking of General Cigars, the company is hitting into tailgating as we approach the heart of football and the end of baseball season with, what else, a Tailgating 6-pack. The deal is you buy four Punch cigars in the special box and you get two free. In addition, you get a Punch cutter and a metal bottle opener (the kind bartenders use.)
The company also is running a contest on the web where it will give away one of the 6-packs every day until December 28th. There is a grand prize of 5 boxes of Punch cigars, a Char-Broil Grill2Go and gift cards from Chicago Steak and StubHub so you get game tickets and meat for the grill at your tailgate party. You can enter every day at punchcigars.com.
Secondhand smoke Backfiring
A Gallup poll released two weeks ago shows that all the rantings about secondhand and now thirdhand smoke are backfiring at least with smokers. 29 percent of smokers think it is very harmful and that is down from 35% the year before. But non smokers still believe the lie. According to Dr. Michael Siegel:
in 2002 the government started upping the rhetoric about the “dangers” of secondhand smoke.
What changed was that the anti-smoking movement began to exaggerate the health effects of secondhand smoke, telling the public that just 30 minutes of secondhand smoke could cause heart attacks in otherwise healthy people, asserting that secondhand smoke exposure is as harmful as smoking, and starting to scare the public about undocumented hazards of third hand smoke.
Third hand smoke is the residue that remains AFTER you have smoked. There is no science on it and came from a poll asking people if they thought there was such a thing. Then later one study said yes third hand smoke exists and of course the anti’s jumped on it.
Adds Siegel, the gross exaggerations and distortions of the science has succeeded in weakening the case against active smoking as well.
But That’s Not ALL. Now 4th and 5th hand smoke
I used to joke that fourth hand smoke was when I was THINKING about smoking a cigar. Well Dr. Siegel says there is actually research going on for fourth and fifth hand smoke ( his term,) Nice to know that the government is spending nearly 400-thousand dollars to study this.
…the proposed study will determine if the risk of childhood asthma induced following exposure to cigarette smoke during pregnancy is limited only to the offspring of the exposed pregnancy, or if this risk is carried to grandchildren or even great-grandchildren.
What is fourthhand smoke, you ask?
I coined the term to represent the effects that fetal exposure to tobacco smoke might have on the subsequent child’s children, even though those individuals might have no exposure to firsthand, secondhand, or third hand smoke.
What, then, is fifth hand smoke?
I coined the term fifth hand smoke to represent the effects that fetal exposure to tobacco smoke might have on the subsequent child’s grandchildren.
The bottom line is they will never stop until all tobacco is banned (and we know how well Prohibition worked against alcohol – hello Boardwalk Empire) and considering they are funded by the government, the money will keep flowing.
