Massachusetts Proposes Anti-Tobacco Propaganda Where Tobacco is Sold
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Kevin Godbee - Jun 21, 2010
- 2 min read
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is preparing to post propaganda pictures in some 9,000 locations where tobacco is sold using a federal stimulus grant of $316,000 to at least partially pay to print them. That hardly contributes to job creation and economic recovery in the state, according to the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association.
"First the federal government expands the State Children’s Health Insurance Program – SCHIP – and expects increased tobacco taxes to pay for it. Then it gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to support efforts to reduce smoking. Talk about mixed messages! Also, such propaganda against smoking will only hurt small businesses while reducing local, state and federal tax revenues," said Chris McCalla, legislative director of the IPCPR.
The association represents some 2,000 professional tobacconists, most of whom are small business owners of mom-and-pop neighborhood cigar stores along with premium cigar manufacturers and distributors of related merchandise. Nearly 40 of those members reside, work and run their businesses in the state of Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts proposal requires that stores display images of human organs purportedly damaged by smoking. They will display graphic photographs of diseased lungs, damaged brains and stained teeth to show the dangers of tobacco use.
According to the Cambridge, Mass.-based civil rights activist Stephen Helfer, such propaganda would be blatantly misleading.
""Massachusetts plans to use images of lungs allegedly damaged by smoking. The message being, that a smoker’s lungs are invariably diseased. The public has no way of knowing, however, if the lungs in the images are from a smoker or a nonsmoker," Helfer wrote in an as-yet unpublished letter to the editor of The Boston Globe.
"I meet men and women in their seventies and eighties who have smoked two or three packs a day since adolescence and appear in better respiratory shape than some younger people who do not smoke," said Andre Weil, M.D., the so-called father of integrative medicine and author of several best-selling books promoting general health and healthy aging.
Helfer also cited evidence that cigarette smokers have a reduced risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and that a similar effect has also been noticed in epidemiological studies of Alzheimer’s disease.
"If health officials wanted to educate, rather than only frighten, they could require that the image of a normal brain of a smoker be displayed next to one ravaged by either of these dread diseases," he noted.
Written by Kevin Godbee
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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. 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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 604. Our featured interview tonight is with Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and he is the former co-host of the podcast, Country Squire Radio, which ended their 10-year run last year. We’ll have JD with the “From the Country Squire” segment talking about all the new things happening at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, we’ll continue our audio tour of Brian’s pipe collection.
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. There must have been some similar musings perambulating through the mind of Per Jensen when he began his mad scientist routine at Sutliff with the Pipe Force project, which brings us to the current mixture under the microscope—Sutliff’s Pipe Force: Episode I. Here again are the unusual ingredients that engendered the series, with the stoved Rustica being the defining voice in this composition. From the tin: The Latakia-forward English mixture offers plenty of smoky flavor from the fire-cured leaf, which is artfully harmonized with floral, earthy Stoved Rustica. A mixture of high-grade Virginias imparts a natural sweetness. Katerini, the sole Oriental component, offers herb and spice notes bringing complexity and nuance to the flavor profile. It’s certainly Latakia-forward, with the stoved Rustica doubling up on the rhythm section like a second bassist. A first whiff from the tin releases the aromas of shoe leather and hide glue in a base of clay soil with a campfire wafted over it like last night’s beach party. Once it’s been accustomed to oxygen again, subtle hints of sweetness poke through from the Virginias: lemon rind, light milk chocolate, the dregs of a peaty Scotch, and muddled cherry. Old regulars like fresh-sawn oak and tilled earth are there, of course, with distinct notes of truffle, creosote, damp peat, and pine bark mulch. As an aside, I’ve been re-potting my camellias and the similarity of aroma to the ericaceous soil mix is notable; the Katerini really brings the unique depth of its vegetal complexion when supported by the Rustica and afforded more voice in the mix. The smoky Cyprian Latakia, in turn, is backed by equal earthiness from the Rustica, which overall exhibits a profile similar to dark-fired Kentucky; it leans more toward the woody and vegetal end of that spectrum, echoing and amplifying those traits of the other constituents. The tobacco is presented pressed and cut into a couple of thick, hearty flakes in the tin, lightly moist and easily crumbled to prepare—I prefer mine with a bit of drying time. The out-of-this-world tin art for this episode in the series is Major O’Meara smoking a cavalier. In the absence of confirmation, I’m going to hazard a guess he’s of the Ithklur species. The first taste from the light is sweet, with hints of that milk chocolate dancing around the edges. The Virginia leads the smoke through the top of the bowl, and orchestrates it well. Thoroughly smoky with lemony, grassy highlights from the Virginia spectrum, it soon segues into the mid-bowl profile: heartier, smokier, with the flavor leaning to the mildly acrid and tangy tinge that is the campfire-esque signature of English blends. Caution advised, it can turn overly bitter if pushed—this is where one’s sipping technique is required to maintain the fullness of flavor through to the heel. I did tend toward a lot of relights, though it may have as much to do with technique as with the blend. Pacing is also important as the nicotine starts to manifest; though the Rustica’s contribution has been tempered well by the stoving, it can certainly upend an empty stomach. At the end of every bowl, the mouthfeel somehow gets better. The balance of sugars in the tobaccos would seem to be spot-on in this regard. 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.
I wonder if there is a Constitutional challenge here.
It would seem that the Government is attempting to hinder the Pursuit of Happiness portion of the the Constitution by asserting a self-presumed right to freedom of speech as if it (the government) has the right to freedom of speech. In a “representative republic” the citizenry are in control of the government not the reverse. The last time I checked the government isn’t a citizen of the United States.
While the “propaganda” purported to show the results of smoking may be well intentioned, the reality is that the government is dictating how a business must merchandise itself. The display of OSHA and DOL literature is for the education of employees (a provision of law that protects the citizenry), the “propaganda” is not intended to educate but hinder and disable the business owner his right to the “pursuit of happiness” or as it was originally intended to mean, his right to provide for his welfare and that of his family and employees.
So, are they also proposing to put signs out front and inside of every bar, showing the horrific highway crashes and mangled bodies of the victims of drunk drivers? In a world with as many issues as this one had, don’t these Nannies have something better to do? Stimulus grant for this? Money down a rathole.
All I can say is, if these wacko’s have there way, then I’ll be movin to Montana soon. thezman.