Washington Tobacconists Look to Allow Cigar, Pipe Smoking in Stores & Lounges
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Kevin Godbee - Feb 10, 2011
- 2 min read
The State of Washington soon may be joining 46 other states regarding smoking ban exemptions for retail tobacco shops and 33 other states exempting cigar lounges from smoking bans, according to local and national groups supporting the exemptions.
Called the Cigar Lounge Bills, HB 1683 and SB 5542 would allow a limited number of endorsements to qualifying cigar lounges and retail tobacconist shops holding retail tobacco products licenses. The House bill is scheduled for a hearing today, Thursday, February 10 at 8:00 a.m. in House Hearing Room 8 of the John L. O’Brien Building in Olympia. The Senate companion bill is scheduled for a hearing by the Labor, Commerce & Consumer Protection Committee at 10:00 a.m. on February 17.
The bills have the support of several local and international cigar-oriented groups led by the Cigar Association of Washington (CAW). Other groups backing the bills are the Seattle Pipe Club, International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association, the Cigar Association of America and Cigar Rights of America. The groups are calling on Washington residents to show their support for the bills by contacting their respective state legislators.
"All Washington voters – especially premium cigar retailers, cigar smokers, pipe smokers, and non-smokers, as well – should tell their state legislators to vote for these bills because jobs and businesses are at stake as well as significant state revenues which will be generated primarily through licenses and sales tax revenues," said Joe Arundel, owner of Rain City Cigar in Seattle and spokesperson for the CAW.
Arundel calls the bills, "small accommodations of fairness to the current draconian statewide smoking ban which prohibits smoking in public places and should not include cigar and pipe smoking in locations that are dedicated to that purpose."
Arundel pointed out that no more than 100 cigar lounge endorsements and 500 retail tobacco shops throughout the state would qualify for the exemption in any calendar year while the license and user fees are expected to raise some $4 million of which $3.8 million will go to the Passport to College Program while the state liquor board will receive $200,000 to administer the program.
To qualify, cigar lounges and retail tobacco shops must show the liquor board they meet stringent new requirements that include the following:
- Physically separated from other areas by solid walls or windows and have self-closing doors
- Contain certified ventilation and exhaust systems
- Allow cigars or pipe tobacco to be smoked in the designated areas
- Post signs indicating cigar and pipe tobacco smoking is permitted on the premises
- Not allow anyone underage to enter the establishment
- Obtain signed acknowledgments from employees who understand that cigar and pipe smoking is permitted on the premises
- Meet strict sales and inventory standards
Related Article: The Second Battle in Seattle
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! 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A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
It sounds reasonable… Hopefully, things will work out.
Hope this passes and turns the tide in other states.
Even if this passes, they sure aren’t making it easy for tobacconists and lounges.
In addition to the requirements above, I just found out the following:
The cost of applying for the state endorsement wouldn’t be cheap: $15,000 for cigar lounges, and $5,000 for tobacco stores. The stores would have to pay the fee every year to renew their endorsements.
Wow!
I believe that the owner of a business should be able to choose what goes on in the business. I believe that if I own a restaurant I should be able to choose whether it allows amoking or not. After all, one’s income is dependant on the numner of customers that the business attracts and one should be able to have control over their property and business. I know that in West Virginia the bars serve 3.2 beer and you have to go to a “private club” to get hard liquor. All you do is go into a private club and give them $2 to join and you can sit down and order a hard drink. There must be some way to get around the smoking law by making the smoking room a private club where members can sit and enjoy a smoke. Why would one have a “gentleman’s club” or a “smoking club” when the members aren’t allowed to smoke….it wouldn’t make sense. At the least, the establishment of a private club would not be covered under the new law and therefore not be aplicable. I think it’s worth looking into. Just a thought.
I am a 57 year old man who has been smoking cigars for about 10 years. I smoke cigars only on my own property but would like to enjoy a cigar now and then with other cigar enthusiasts in a social setting such as a private club. Why is that such a big deal? Since I have not always been a smoker, I really do understand the general public’s aversion to second hand smoke but why should they be able to prevent me from smoking in a closed environment? Have we become so intolerant and politically correct that we have the right to dictate the private consumption of a legal substance in a private setting? And to force the owners of smoking establishments to pay the government outrageous licensing fees? I feel that the goverment is sticking it’s ever growing nose way too far into my private life and my rights as a citizen of this country. How infuriating and how sad! So I say to my fellow smokers: Stand up and fight!