IPCPR 2019 Update #1 Regulatory Affairs and Changes to IPCPR
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James Foster - Jun 29, 2019
- 5 min read
James Foster, CST
Well, friends, it’s that time again where I’ve trekked out to Vegas for you in the summertime… Braving the heat, strange offers from Uber drivers, and Brian Levine’s attempts at comedy to bring you the latest news that’s fit to print about the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association (IPCPR) trade show. Attending always welcomes old faces and new faces and this year has been no different, except for the new face of IPCPR.
That’s right, IPCPR is being rebranded. Funnily enough when they had the “big announcement” almost everyone already knew the details with a few exceptions bringing about what they even termed as the worst kept secret in the industry. IPCPR is now the Premium Cigar Association(PCA).
No premium tobacco, no pipes or pipe tobacco mentioned in the name. The Pipe industry is relegated to the tagline after the name. What gave me a laugh, was one of the reasons for the name change, tied into the problem the industry faces with regulations.
I proposed they just throw in an extra P – PP&CA but when you think about how Congress is these days, they’ll think the name has something to do with going to a urologist.
You see when the IPCPR as a lobbying group goes to sit down with members of Congress, they are continually spending the first 5-10 minutes explaining that they do not in fact have anything to do with the heart, or medicine as many in the government who see the acronym only see ipCPR.
Really, no more pipes in the name?
One of the analogies they threw out when asked about dropping Pipes from the name is that handgun owners don’t look for a separate organization they still join the National Rifle Association (NRA). Additionally, they reminded the room that Cigars make up 95% of the premium tobacco industry. Gee, thanks.
Along with this name change, we’ve got another big shakeup for the event and the association. Next years 2020 IPC er PCA event will have 2 days that consumers can go and attend with an event tagged onto the beginning of the show called CigarCon.
The first day (Friday) will be educational tracks and the 2nd day will be a half day on the trade show floor with your local retailer showing you around. Now before you start rubbing your grubby paws together about getting free pipes, tobacco and cigars there is a catch.
What we know about the show so far:
There will be 4500 tickets available.
They are expanding the type of companies invited to participate – for instance, liquor, watches, cars, premium lifestyle brands you know.
With this, we can expect tobacco and bourbon pairings.
These tickets will start off only being available through your local retailer (ie your retailer will have a code to give you).
We don’t have a price yet but it won’t be cheap.
This isn’t a tradeshow where you get a bag, run to all the booths snag as many boxes of stuff as you can and run away. You’ll have a set amount of tobacco items you can get.
Think of this as an opportunity to have the greatest access to the largest selection of tobacco you’ve ever seen. So choose… but choose wisely.
There are 2500 retailers that belong to IPCPR so if every one of them brought 2 customers the tickets would be gone so this could be the hottest ticket in town.
There is an experience factor here of being able to go with your local retailer, get introduced to manufacturers, distributors, growers, etc that can’t be overlooked.
In order to attend consumers will actually become members of the PCA- thus keeping the event a closed, members-only event that is not open to the public.
By paying for the fee for the ticket, it covers the FDA regulation about giving samples to consumers.
Regulatory Update:
The vaping or e-cigarette industry has put the spotlight on the tobacco industry in general and regulations to adopt T-21 or Tobacco 21 legislature are center stage now because of this. IPCPR and Cigar Rights of America (CRA) have continued to get in front of lawmakers to educate that the industry when it comes to cigars and pipes; reiterating that premium tobacco is an adult leisure activity. But it continues to be an uphill battle. In 10 weeks they had 65 meetings and many of those meetings members of Congress were ignorant to what constituted a premium cigar or premium tobacco vs a cigarette.
There are two bills one in the House and one in the Senate the Traditional Cigar Manufacturing and Small Business Jobs Preservation Act of 2019 HR-1854 and S-9 with the same name- to continue to differentiate premium cigars from vaping and cigarettes. In summary, these two bills are “To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to clarify the Food and Drug Administration’s jurisdiction over certain tobacco products, and to protect jobs and small businesses involved in the sale, manufacturing and distribution of traditional and premium cigars.”
What they don’t do is carve out any exceptions for pipes or pipe tobacco.
Lawsuit against the FDA
3 Years ago IPCPR and CRA filed a lawsuit against the FDA for many of the provisions of their regulations. We got a brief update on 2 items which are now with the US district courts (1 step down from the supreme court) and that is the requirement for warning labels on cigar boxes and tins of tobacco as well as the substantial equivalent requirement for manufacturers. To date, IPCPR and CRA have spent around 3.2 million dollars on legal fees fighting the latest round of encroachment on our freedoms.
Stay Tuned
We’ll be back shortly with more happy thoughts in the next post with news and updates from vendors you know and love as I make my way to chat with people like Chris Gawith whose made his first trip over to IPCPR to see what it’s all about.
 James Foster goes by the online handle of Pylorns in the forums, and he is the creator of an app for keeping track of your tobacco cellar inventory called The Pipe Tool, serves as the President of the Austin Pipe Club and is a Certified Tobacconist. |
Written by James Foster
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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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Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. 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.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. 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The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. 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With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 632. Our featured guest on tonight’s show is the host of the Pipe & Tamper Podcast, Mike Murphy. Brian and Mike will have an extended chat revolving around the days before, during and after the Las Vegas International Pipe Show. We will hear about their travels to the show and the anxiety of Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida at the same time while running a show and not knowing if your house is going to be there when you get home. In the end, the show went great and our homes survived, although many others in Florida were not so lucky. We’ll have clips from the show, and shoutouts to other podcasts and vlogs that were broadcasting from the pipe show.
Vegas Baby The show started out strong on the 14th floor hospitality suites hosted by the Vegas Pipe Show and Smoking Pipes as well as room hopping to carvers, estate sellers, and vendors to pre-game for the festivities. If you’re interested in what that looks like I’ll refer you to last years pipe show round up. I circled with Brian Levine to get the totals in comparison to last year: This year’s show numbers: 108 Exhibitor tables, 445 attendees, 3,250 Raffle Tickets, 100ish dinners, 172 Rooms in the Hotel. Last year, by comparison, 107 exhibitor tables, 425 attendees, 2,200 raffle tickets, 104 dinners, and 175 rooms on Friday and Saturday nights. We were at capacity, basically, when it came to vendor tables and the dinner, so there is no physical room for growth at this point except for attendees. That said, we filled that smoking lounge to the brim. New Carvers Spotlight Garret Woo (Pipes by Woo) How long have you been carving? Garret: I’ve been carving since 2021, and I’m guessing your next question is probably how’d you get started carving? James: Yes. Garret: In 2021 I took a break from my full time job – that included machining and assembly work and I thought maybe it was time I made something that I would like and I started looking at youtube and Instagram and putting together my shop. I did struggle on the stems to start and there was a lot of failure at the beginning. James: How many pipes have you made so far? Garret: I number my pipes, so I just finished up 186. James: What is your favorite shape you’ve been making? Garret: I really dig Canadians and pipes with longer shanks and lovat Canadian blends. I like to play with different shapes of stems on the longer shanked pipes. The billiard would be my go-to shape but I want to learn more techniques on freehanded shapes. I like to put brass and copper adornments on my pipes with my machining background it helps. James: What is the craziest thing you’ve seen at this show? Garret: The first thing that comes to mind is the table over there with C-Pipes with the shapes and the size and petiteness and the intricate details they did. You can check out what Garret is working on by going to his Instagram. Stefan Cashwell James: how long have you been carving? Stefan: about 3 years. James: What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen at the show? Stefan: The Adam Davidson pipe with the clear shape and the bamboo—I don’t know if it’s 3D printed or what, but it’s amazing. James: What’s your favorite shape to do? Stefan: That’s a tough question. I think they’re all the same shape, but what’s fascinating is that Dublin, volcano, and blowfish are all the same depending on how you turn them. Playing with that, with all its variations, is a lot of fun. My favorite accent to use is also horn; it’s finicky, but it’s a great accent on pipes. You can check out Stefan’s work on his Instagram. Science: Meet Pipes I chatted with Chris from the San Diego Pipe Club; he started off doing stem replacements for estate pipes but also improved the airflow. James: How are you doing 3d printing? What is the thought process? Chris: It’s a 3D-printed pipe with a briar insert. The design is a calabash meets a Peterson system meets a metal Falcon/Kirsten radiator style. It is a bottom draft smoking bowl like a radiator like those metal pipes. The inside chamber is a calabash. The stummel and accent rings in the stems are all 3d printed. The insert is briar, olive wood, or I have the potential to use meerschaum as well. This idea came about through the San Diego Pipe Club, wanting to see if we could 3D print a pipe and being curious about the technology; I have a printer and design ability, so here we are. James: What’s the type of plastic you’re using? Chris: It’s all PLA plastic, a renewable potato starch plastic that is food-safe. The stummels are printed with a plastic that has wood in it 40% wood fiber, bamboo, rosewood, ebony, redwood, and walnut are the woods I’m printing. For the accent rings I just got a new material that I’m printing that has 40% copper, so its real metal that you can sand, and polish the same as wood filament. The stems are 3d printed as well. The concept is renewable and cheap from a production standpoint, with the ability to make a very high quality smoking pipe based on the experience. By combining the calabash system pipe and bottom draft hole and using 3d simulations to see airflow, I can see where I’m having eddies and ripples in my current, and see where my moisture and all the particles are dropping back out from a vapor to a liquid. Most people who have tried these say the stems are clean, and they don’t even have to run a pipe cleaner afterward because everything collects at the bottom. Chris has also been experimenting with color-changing plastics so you can see the hotspots. Chris said he was able to use this to slow down his cadence, which, of course, could mean you could get a slow-smoke training pipe to teach yourself to perform better. If you’re interested in learning more or want to check one out, you can contact him on Instagram: Copper Beard Pipe Works The Negative Space The show was buzzing about one specific pipe, which had everyone guessing how it was made. I chatted with Adam Davidson briefly about it. James: How did this idea come to fruition? Adam Davidson: Smokingpipes.com had an expo back in August open to all of the makers they carry. The theme was to make a pipe utilizing bamboo. Given that the last time we had the expo I made a smooth Almond with three bamboo shanks, […]
Indigenous Americans will have a HUGE say on all this…
Data’s Calabash here again…as I’ve stated a number of times here before, and now with just over two years before “the eighth day of the eighth month of 2021” arrives in the USA, some of us have now heard about Canadian First Nations indigenous citizens having had issues with Health Canada over indigenous tobacco rights, a report from April of 2018: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/indigenous-nationhood/2018/04/indigenous-tobacco-trade-aboriginal-right-why-canada …
Also, the unprecedented attempt by the FDA to regulate all indigenous pipemaking ITSELF in the United States is quite likely to affect how American tribes can craft and do trading of catlinite-stummel ceremonial pipes for their exclusive use (no one but Native Americans are allowed by long-existing Federal law to mine it for any purpose, sort of like the “eagle feather law”)…
…it’s basically an “inconvenient truth” that is coming up on the dozens of indigenous American tribal societies that still have a firm role for natural/organic tobacco in their cultures, as the date of August 8, 2021 “creeps up” on them, AND for all of us who enjoy pipes as a “matter-of-course” in our daily lives.
If there is one particular society in the USA that could literally “shut down” the ongoing-since-2009 FDA/cigarette company collusion to eliminate pipe and cigar enjoyment in the United States, it’s indigenous American tribes that WILL have to make it too painful for the FDA to go any further in their agenda…
…and instead replace the FDA’s demented agenda to “keep kids & adolescents” from tobacco, to the only form that it CAN realistically take, given what indigenous Americans are facing, and what they are likely to do to stop the FDA…by forcing the Federal government to get cigarettes completely OUT of the U.S. armed forces permanently (which has been a major incentive to get young people addicted to “those damn butts”, as it has been for over a century); and allow our over-21 troops to solely enjoy pipes (as they’ve done since the American Revolution) with natural/organic, hand-blended pipe mixtures; and solely natural-leaf, handmade cigars (since even before the Civil War), and nothing else.
It’s going to be up to indigenous American societies…numbering some 340 distinct tribes in the “lower-48” states recognized by the Feds, and numerous (likely over 150) that only have state-level recognition at this time (and ARE trying for Federal recognition)…to take the “battle over pipe rights” OUT of the FDA’s hands permanently, and basically PROTECT those rights for both themselves, and for us as well.