You’d have to be living under a rock not to know that over the past few decades, there’s been a massive shift in America’s attitude towards smoking — this is now an anti-smoking society. That’s because you’d also have to be living under a rock not to know that smoking has been determined to be a leading cause of several significant health problems, including lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. Every cigarette smoker I’ve ever known (including myself, back when I smoked them) understood that it was dangerous and potentially deadly. Other forms of smoking tobacco, including our beloved cigars, also expose the user to many of the same carcinogens. Granted, cigars do so at a much lower level, but still not what anyone would consider 100% safe. But as I’ve blogged about before, there is a significant difference between smoking a cigarette and smoking a cigar — enough that it really bothers me when cigar smokers are categorically lumped in with cigarette smokers.

The latest example of this came a few weeks ago when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) announced that on-screen tobacco smoking — including cigarettes, cigars, and pipes — would be considered in a film’s rating, and given certain circumstances could lead to an ‘R’ rating. In making such an assessment, the ratings board will ask three questions:

#1 - Is the smoking pervasive?
#2 - Does the film glamorize smoking?
#3 - Is there a historic or other mitigating context?

Furthermore, if a film is rated ‘R’ due to smoking, warning phrases such as “glamorized smoking” or “pervasive smoking” will be included in the ratings text, right up there with “nudity”, “explicit sexual content”, “language”, “drug use”, and “excessive violence”.

Some advocates of the smoking related ratings system believe that an “R” rating would prevent almost 200,000 adolescents from starting to smoke every year. I’m not so sure I believe that. I mean, each and every one of those 200,000 kids are already aware of the dangers of smoking, and if they are so inclined to start, I don’t believe an “R” rating is going to make much of a difference; after all, nearly half of all American movies already receive that “R” rating, and that doesn’t seem to stop kids — especially teens — from seeing those films. Of course, I don’t believe that Heavy Metal music makes kids violent, or that Rap music turns kids into gang bangers, either.

Consider the wildly popular PG-13 rated Spider-Man films. The comic book has been published since 1962, and Peter Parker’s boss, newspaper publisher J. Jonah Jameson, has had a cigar in his mouth for 45 years now. Can you imagine the character NOT smoking a cigar? I certainly can’t — and apparently neither could the movie producers, who naturally put one in his mouth.

But under the new ratings system, would that cigar smoking be considered “glamorous” or “pervasive”? Will Spider-Man 4 — which will likely contain no nudity, no explicit sexual content, no bad language, no drug use, no excessive violence, and likely no cigarette smoking — be given an “R” rating simply because J. Jonah Jameson smokes a cigar?

I hope not.

But then again, that’s because I know that cigars and cigarettes are vastly different kinds of tobacco products with vastly different kinds of use.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure the MPAA knows that.

Heres a little article on Canada.com about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent trip to Canada. While hew as up there he made a stop in a local cigar shop within the Westin Hotel in Ottawa. He picked up a Partagas (they don’t mention which one exactly) and was on his merry way. It doesn’t seem like he made any attempt to hide the fact that he was purchasing Cuban goods blocked by the embargo, as he was escorted by 10 police officers. Who exactly would be out to get him in Canada that he needed that much protection… I am not sure.

So my wife went to Las Vegas last week for a business conference, and being a cigar enthusiast, I naturally asked her if she’d be so kind as to swing by the Casa Fuente store at the Forum Shops of Caesars Palace to pick up one of their the exclusive Casa Fuente cigars. At $18 to $28 per stick, they’re not exactly cheap, but since the Casa Fuente store is the only place you can buy them, you get a certain collectibility with the purchase — and if there is any cigar brand with an inherent collectivity value, it’s Arturo Fuente.

As it turned out, my wife did better than just pick up a single stick; she purchased a 7-cigar sampler box containing one of each Casa Fuente vitola! The sampler box costs $150, a $13 savings on the price of buying the sticks individually, which would normally run $163.

Casa Fuente 7-cigar sampler box

Open box showing the enclosed Boveda Humidipak

Open box showing the cigars

All 7 vitolas (L-R): Double Corona, Churchill, Torpedo, Double Robusto, Belicos Finos, Corona Gorda, Robusto.

I’m certainly looking forward to smoking these cigars, as I am a fan of both the Opus X (on which the Casa Fuente filler is based) and Cameroon wrappers. I plan on letting them rest for a month in my humidor before burning one, but when I do, I will be sure to post a review here on the BOTL Cigar Blog.

In the meantime, I’m going to be extra-nice to my wife for making such a wonderful purchase!

Sure, I live smack-dab in the middle of a city of 2.5 million people, but truth be told, I’m more redneck than metropolitan–or to use a more hip term, “metrosexual” (and note, the fact that I had to use quotes to fit that word into my conversation proves I’m not that hip). But even a redneck like myself will occasionally ask the question, “am I a pretentious cigar snob?”

You see, I’m sitting out on my back deck listening to the duck and geese squawking out by the creek, and I’m just about ready to light up the cigar in my hand: a well-aged Padron from 2003 that was gifted to me by fellow BOTL member jwintosh (I know that because I labeled the cigar with one of those little paper bands from Heartfelt Industries). Anyways, I just pulled the cigar out of an individual cigar-shaped plastic zip-lock bag — because as you know, Padron doesn’t cello-wrap their cigars, so I bagged it myself to protect the stick while it sat in my temperature and humidity controlled cigar humidor — and picked up one of my many cigar cutters, this time going for the Xikar cutter, which I slid out of its protective leather sheath.

SNIP!

Off comes the cap, clean and precise, exactly what you expect from a high-quality cutter. I give the cigar a pre-light draw to test the pull, and then reach down and grab my Xikar lighter, which I had just refilled minutes earlier with triple-refined lighter fuel. I toast the end and slowly light the cigar, savoring the initial burst of flavor. Then I set the cigar down in my One-Off Molino designer ashtray so I can check my email wirelessly on my Apple PowerBook.

And that’s when it hits me–this cigar is from 2003, which would have been right about the time I really seriously started smoking cigars. And you know what my first “real” cigar was? A Padron that was gifted to me by my buddy Justin. Difference was, when I smoked that first one, I bit the cap off with my teeth and lit it with a cheap disposable Bic lighter. And being a former cigarette smoker, I’m sure I inhaled some of it, too–and probably didn’t mind one bit. But thinking about the experience of smoking that first cigar compared to this one in my hand made me question, “I a pretentious cigar snob now?”

I’ve come to a conclusion:

No, I’m not a pretentious cigar snob; I’m just a well-accessorized redneck.

I just stumbled upon the Holy Smoke website and thought it was worth mentioning here for anyone who hasn’t seen it.

The site is run by Father H. Setter, a full blown priest from Kansas. For 10 years he has been holding cigar dinners with the proceeds going to different charities. Theres a list of some of them on the site, and according to the calendar he will be holding another in June.

In addition to his charity work the website also has useful links to cigar manufacturers, tips for people new to cigars, cigar friendly establishments, and even an area with the father’s merchandise.

Ask any serious cigar smoker who’s smoked cigarettes before, they’ll all tell you the same thing: cigars and cigarettes are two radically different products. Yes, they’re both made from the leaves of a tobacco plant, and yes both are consumed by burning, but beyond that, there’s terribly little in common with the two.

I smoked cigarettes for 15 years, in college and all throughout my twenties. I finally quit when I was 33, and it was truly the most difficult thing I’d ever done. The combination of mental and physical addiction was nearly impossible to overcome. I mean, I really didn’t even enjoy smoking–cigarettes themselves aren’t particularly pleasant. They’re rather tasteless and bland, are chocked-full of harmful chemicals, and in today’s world you’re practically ostracized by society if you smoke.

Smoking premium handmade cigars, on the other hand, is an entirely different experience–far more akin to drinking a glass of fine wine than sucking down a dry-cured, machine-made, chemical-filled, paper-wrapped, homogenized-tobacco cigarette. Unfortunately, most people today don’t understand the difference between the two. We’re all indoctrinated to the fact that smoking cigarettes is an unhealthy, cancer causing, addictive habit. Ask a non-smoker what they think of cigarettes and they’ll answer, “Yuk.” Ask them about cigars and they’ll most likely provide the same answer because they can’t appreciate the difference.

But cigar smokers understand.

First and foremost, premium handmade cigars are constructed of pure, unprocessed natural tobacco leaves. No chemical additives, no homogenized chopped-and-mixed tobacco, no paper, no chemically processed cellulose filer.

But even beyond the physical makeup, the big difference in cigars versus cigarettes is consumption. For the most part, cigar smokers don’t inhale the smoke, and typically cigars are consumed at a fraction of the rate of cigarettes. A typical cigarette smoker will suck down 20 or more per day, but a typical cigar smoker smokes only a few sticks per week. Granted, there’s a lot more tobacco in a single cigar than in a whole stack of cigarettes, but there’s no added chemicals and (again, for the most part) cigars aren’t inhaled into the lungs. Because of that, cigar smokers are subject to significantly fewer harmful toxins than cigarette smokers.

But even more important than any of that is the cigar smoking experience itself. Unlike a cigarette, smoking a cigar isn’t about the delivery of nicotine–just like drinking a fine wine isn’t about the consumption of alcohol. Smoking a cigar is about the symphony of flavors, the admiration of the fine construction, the appreciation of the aroma, the use of the accessories, the hobby of collecting, and possibly most important of all, the camaraderie of enjoying one with a group of fellow cigar smokers.

It is a sort of brotherhood.

And we are Brothers of the Leaf.

As I sit here on my back deck smoking a cigar, quietly contemplating why I smoke cigars, how radically different they are from cigarettes, and how best to translate that into written word for this, my first blog post, I’m struck by how absurdly long the name is of this particular cigar I’m smoking: Cuesta-Rey Centenario Pyramid No. 9 Stanford’s Cameroon Reserve. That’s 56 characters–not including spaces–just to name the cigar!

It reminded me of a story about a college girlfriend. She and I had only recently begun dating, and I mentioned that I needed to stop at a convenience store to buy some cigarettes. She casually asked if I could pick her up a pack of her brand as well. Naturally I said, “sure, whatca want?” thinking it was a great opportunity to do something nice for her–I mean hey, good deeds and favors are always a great way to start a relationship, especially when you’re trying to get in their pants.

Unfortunately, she proceeded to rattle off the longest cigarette brand name I’d ever heard. “Uh, what was that again?”, I aksed, as my heart sank into my stomach, knowing how difficult it would be to remember such a complex name (and cripes, buying a girl the wrong brand of smokes surely would ruin my chances of separating her from her pants). She repeated it again–slowly this time, as if I were mentally challenged–and made me repeat it back a few times to make sure I’d properly memorized it.

Somehow, I managed to stumble in to the Gas-n-Sip and correctly repeat the insanely long brand name to the clerk, who promptly handed them to me and accepted payment. Proudly, I strutted back out to the car and handed her the pack of smokes, smiling ear to ear because I knew I’d gotten it correct: Benson & Hedges Deluxe Ultra Light Menthol 100’s. That’s 41 characters–not including spaces–and I’d nailed it perfectly.

She smiled and said, “thanks…but where are your cigarettes?”

Crap! In my desperation to properly remember her brand, I’d completely forgotten to buy what I’d gone in for in the first place. Thankfully, she didn’t hold that against me; apparently, stupidity can sometimes be cute.