Of Dead Horses, Catfish and The Vapors
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Kevin Godbee - Jan 6, 2015
- 5 min read
Fred Brown
Not to beat a dead horse. . . . Well, okay, maybe one more time. It’s a new year. Trying to get a read on the Food and Drug Administration is like attempting to decipher one of those post-World War II 10-inch television test patterns: You get a lot of numbers, voodoo math figures, shifting scenes, screen noise (read that as pixels the size of dimes), all in black and white, which is not how the FDA deals. The FDA has never-ending shades of gray produced by a bloated bureaucracy, which eats your tax dollars by the millions.
All right, I get it. Enough of the rant. Here you go, both barrels: How would you like that e-cigarette? With or without anti-freeze? Oh, and that fried catfish you love so much, it’s likely from Asia where they grow these Frankenfish that are impervious to a nuclear blast. They are born and bred in water so toxic it makes an environmental disaster seem healthy.
What has this to do with pipe tobacco, you ask?
Good question. The same federal agency that governs pipe tobacco is supposed to be regulating things like emulsified vapors for E-cigs and those catfish we eat. No regulations have emerged as yet for E-cigs, so if you are smoking one of the things, you might want to read the small print.
A recent national report cited the vapors (not to be confused with pipe tobacco VA/PERS) contain a variety of chemicals and elements, including anti-freeze, or diethyleyne glycol, which is used in the stuff to keep your car engine from freezing in foul weather.
You can also get e-cigs with silicon fibers, heavy metals like lead and zinc and such other stuff as chromium and nickel at higher levels found in regular cigarettes (if there is such a thing). And, ah, some of the lithium ion batteries that ignite the fluid vapors have exploded. Imagine that! You are puffing away, safe from FDA regs, and suddenly the thing at the end of your mouth erupts in flames?
The latest news on the e-cigarette market is there is no sheriff in town and it is a wild, Wild West affair. The Chinese churn out e-cigs in the millions, and most of those hot little numbers sail to U.S. and European markets, just right for plucking. E-cigarettes are totally unregulated in China, and not so much in the U.S. So, that e-liquid that makes the e-cigarette so scrumptious could have anything in it, and probably does. Some have been found to have paint and metal particles so small they easily lodge in a smoker’s lungs. And the sad fact is, you might expect things to be loose in China, but e-cigs have not been regulated by the FDA.
At least, not yet.
Now, back to those catfish. They arrive by the ton in the U.S., usually from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations that aqua-farm the fish in catfish ponds. A documentary in 2010 filmed catfish ponds in Vietnam that are fed by sewer and sludge-laced waters from large water sources, such as the Mekong River. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of these catfish regularly arrive in American restaurants and line store shelves in the U.S., ready for our consumption. Less than two percent of this catfish sludge in a can or frozen toxic slabs is inspected by the FDA, according to the documentary, "Dirty Waters, Dangerous Fish".
Okay. Now that the rant really is over, here is the crux: While the FDA zeroes in on pipe tobacco like a laser, it is letting other very, very harmful things enter into our lives, i.e. e-cigarettes and fish that could be used as roach poison. You will be happy to learn that the FDA’s 2015 fiscal year budget request for tobacco alone is a mere $531,527,000, all produced by what the FDA terms as "user fees." FDA has budgeted $30-plus million more for rent than it had in the just-ended 2014.
Not to worry. You are paying for this through your user fees, better known in the budget games as taxes. Oh, and you’ll be glad to know that Dr. Tom Coburn, a medical doctor who is also a Republican U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, found an interesting FDA budget item published his 2014 Wastebook:
Your tax dollars paid $410,000 for a piece of sculpture (feel free to add your own colorful phrase here) that is a replica of the original.
A Chicago artist named Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle wanted to find out if he created a life-size steel and aluminum replica of artist Constantin Brancusi’s iconic Birds in Space sculpture—which brought in more than $24 million when sold in 2005—if it could fly? Nobody is making this up. You can read this for yourself in Dr. Tom’s Wastebook. Unapologetically, Manglano-Ovalle shut up the replica sculpture, in a hypervelocity wind tunnel, and turned up the dial to Mach 10. The aluminum and steel bird did not fly.
But the upgraded replica makes a nice decoration at the FDA’s Biologics Evaluation and Research building. All the while, the pipe tobacco industry is set upon by increased user fees, taxes, FDA harassment and industry-threatening regulations. Already, tobacco farmers in the southeastern U.S. have just about tossed in their tobacco baskets and got out of the business of raising leaf. It is no longer the staple crop of southern farmers.
You want to know why your precious pipe tobacco continues to go up in price? Just take a gander at the FDA’s proposed 2015 budget: $4.74 billion. Not all of that, of course, is to regulate tobacco products. That’s around $773 million to do what it has to do with tobacco. You can get all this at the FDA’s FY 2015 Budget Page. Warning: It will cross your eyes and dot your T’s.
But, it is worth reading, simply because it focuses on the problem: the FDA is spending millions on tobacco while letting troublesome health risks such as toxic fish and e-cigarettes enter the U.S. market without an iron-fisted regulatory hand—the one it raises to pipe tobacco. The guess here is that U.S. tobacco is the low-hanging fruit and every politician worth his suit and PAC fund is onboard with eliminating tobacco in the nation. And, dagnabbit, just as we begin to realize that Cuba is not the bad boy bugaboo we thought and now we are ready to normalize relations. More Cuban cigars anyone? Would you like that just plain straight, pure, beautiful tobacco leaf?
Well, you get the idea. VA/PER is better for you than the vapors. And you need to keep an eye on that catfish you just purchased for dinner. It might get up and walk off. No, wait. Catfish have already walked up on Florida shores. Never mind.
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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. 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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. 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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.
This article points out how we consumers are regulated by a double standard.
Unfortunately, anti tobacco histeria has successfuly created the erroneous opinion that all tobacco products cause instant cancer, but a new contageous variety. This is despite the fact that most published work from reliable sources only go so far as to say “may contribute” which is a far cry from “cause”.
All the while we choke down genetically modified food like it’s even better than the real thing. Apparently we are now consuming mutant fish from virtually unregulated countries.
With standards like this it¿s hard to believe anything we are told anymore!
Very interesting article and an example of FDA and Big Government gone wild.
I keep wondering how can we stop it and will it end?
Thanks for a well written and informative article. I’m not sure I enjoyed the read, however. 🙁