Don’t Believe Everything You Read, Cigar Association Warns Pelham Mayor
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Kevin Godbee - Oct 19, 2010
- 2 min read
Pelham, Alabama – The International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association strongly suggests that Pelham Mayor Don Murphy and the Alabaster City Council change their reading habits to include factually balanced materials when it comes to smoking bans and secondhand smoke.
That position was taken by the IPCPR when Mayor Murphy, who announced this week he is considering a citywide ban on smoking in public places, was quoted as saying "Everything I am reading (is) about how bad secondhand smoke is for everyone." At the same time, down the road, the Alabaster City Council is holding public hearings on a public smoking ban in its city.
"These people are either out of touch with reality or they are limited their reading to the extremely biased and falsely slanted materials provided by prohibitionists," said Chris McCalla, legislative director of the IPCPR, an association of some 2,000 tobacconists, largely small businesses engaged in the manufacturing and retailing of premium cigars, pipes, tobacco and related accoutrements.
McCalla said no studies exist that support the prohibitionists’ wild claims that secondhand smoke represents any health risks indoors, let alone outdoors.
"Sometimes lawmakers feel obliged to give the appearance that they are doing something to justify their existence when all they are doing is wasting everyone’s time on silly matters like this," said McCalla.
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"Surveys show that legislated smoking bans ruin more businesses than they help," he said. "That’s why we are against any form of legislated smoking bans and urge civility and courtesy between smokers and non-smokers. This is nothing but ‘control creep,’ where prohibitionists grab a piece at a time at our rights to run our own lives."
McCalla cited regulations of OSHA – the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor – that declared safe levels of secondhand smoke to be up to 25,000 times safer than air quality found in the average bar or restaurant.
"Many restaurant and bar owner already declare their premises as non-smoking and that’s just fine," McCalla said. "However, when their rights as property owners are usurped by petty legislation that is based on false information, it’s just not the way things should be. Whether you are a smoker or not, you should be against legislated smoking bans because the deprivation of this basic, inherent right is the first step down the slippery slope of loss of rights in other areas of our lives."
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 605. Our featured interview tonight is with Pete Prevost. Pete is a pipe maker and the President of the BriarWorks pipe factory in Columbia Tennessee. BriarWorks is a a pipe maker co-op with several other pipe makers, including Todd Johnson, who co-founded it with Pete. Brian and Pete will be talking about what’s new at BriarWorks, and how they are getting ready to attend the Chicago pipe show. (This was recorded before the show that took place last weekend.) At the top of the show, Brian will give his report of his travels and what happened at the Chicago show.
When I first started with the pipe as a quirky and precocious teen, the only tutelage I had at my disposal were scenes from old movies in which a well dressed chap would stick his pipe into a pouch, scoop tobacco into the bowl and press it down unceremoniously with his thumb. Then, with great flourish, he’d strike a match and light the thing with all manner of cinematic excess, puffing up vast clouds of smoke falling just short of completely obscuring his visage. While it may look good on film, it’s a terrible approach to actually enjoying the thing. Somehow, though, this “technique” seems to have survived in the contemporary vernacular, at least to some extent, even with bit-loads of information handily at our fingertips that should dissuade us from the practice. But, at the time, this misguided approach was all I had; it’s no wonder my early days of puffing were fraught with difficult lighting, harsh, bitter smokes and tongue bite, all culminating in a fireproof mass of ye old soggy dottle in the bottom of the bowl. Ultimately, the resulting frustration made me give up the pipe, at least for a while. While the idea of it was still very appealing, the practice of it was not. It wasn’t until a few years later when, still full of curiosity and romantic notions of pipe smoking, I wandered into a real tobacconist’s shop, and learned my “method” was a long way from the techniques that would bring me to any sort of pipe smoking bliss. So, after my poor start, and under the guidance of someone who actually seemed to know how to do it right, I was given the opportunity to approach the process anew, this time with much greater success. 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Before we begin, I should tell you: this tobacco review is being written by an A.I. Not the fancy new GPTs or their ilk; no, this is last century’s meat-and-bone, all-organic model. To be fair, a large part of what we call knowledge is merely the accumulated perceptions and impressions gathered from a life wandered through, synthesized into a spongy mass of what-it-is-that-we-think-that-we-know. The algorithm for this prompt is simple enough: pump thousands of bowls of smoldering plant matter into a gaping maw, cross-reference the chemical sensations with all other matter previously ingested or inhaled, sieve it all through the diffuse and fractal twin lens of memory and emotion, and churn out a panoply of adjectives that attempts to convey the sensations to someone who hasn’t experienced it yet. Odds are that a diligently trained monkey could succeed half the time; if this reviewer nears fifty-one percent then that would qualify as an unrivaled success. 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I started out my tasting in cobs, then cut short an unpleasant bowl in a meer, and finally landed on my best instrument with the lovely Dunhill 4427 pictured, a quaint group 4 shell briar with a gentle curve and Cumberland stem supporting a perfectly executed acorn bowl. It surprised me here, as I’ve learned through the years that I generally have the best experience with English blends in large, wide bowls. With this blend it seems that to get the best out of the Katerini’s somewhat diaphanous influence the smaller bowl fared much better. Room note is very English, so the company you keep will either love it or hate it, and it doesn’t linger too much. I find it paired best with a strong coffee; Sumatran beans complement the flavors well, as do Ethiopian if a lighter brew is preferred. Overall impressions of the blend are that it’s a curiously interesting take on the English genre, almost a reductive reconstruction of the theme using the unique components. This blend, if nothing else, expanded my vocabulary of sense perceptions with the uniquely treated leaf. While the average human can distinguish approximately one trillion (1,000,000,000,000!) different aromas, multiplied by seven basic tastes, and wholly dependent on variables from body chemistry to atmospheric conditions, our overworked and underpaid simian brains can’t effectively catalog them all. Our pet adding machines are exceedingly good at this, however, and someday soon they’ll be the ultimate and unequivocal authority on what something tastes, smells, looks, or even feels like. Until that time, friends, revel in the moments that can be stolen to savor over a bowl of Pipe Force: Episode I.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 603. Our featured interview tonight is with Rick Newcombe. Rick is a well-known author of several pipe books, and he is currently working on his third book. He is a prominent collector of Danish pipes, and vintage tobaccos. He has traveled the world visiting pipe makers, and learning their different techniques. He is also the founder and chairman of Creators Syndicate, which currently represents more than 200 writers and artists. At the top of the show we’ll have a Pipe Smoking 101 segment discussing best pipe shapes and sizes that are best suited to certain types of tobacco.
Yup, we see it all the time. People won’t support these kinds of rights issues because they don’t have a “dog in this fight” — yet. It happened to us when we failed to support the RYO-ers tax fight, and it’ll happen to non-smokers eventually as the “control creep” mentioned in this article spreads to all areas within our society.
I certainly won’t be voting for those “Control Creeps” in Alabaster.
Well, there you have it. I just don’t get it. What has happened to common sense in these situation’s and in our time’s in general. We’ve got to expose these anti-smoke group’s for what they really are. Nut’s!