You’ve Got to Fight for Your Right to Smoke
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Kevin Godbee - Sep 13, 2009
- 2 min read
You’ve got to fight for your right to paaaaahhhhteh! The Beastie Boys song goes through my head as I think about how "You’ve Got to Fight for Your Right to Party" isn’t just about youth rebellion. It’s about living your life the way you want to without someone else telling you what to do. It’s about personal freedoms. Any business owners in the audience raise your hands. Ok, home owners raise your hands. Apartment dwellers ? Now let’s pretend I’m going to come into your house or apartment and go through the pantry and refrigerator and confiscate your potato chips, cookies, sugary cereals, I am going to block the naughty channels on your TV remote, and we have a new earlier bedtime for you.
What’s wrong? You don’t like that? But it’s for your own good. These things are all bad for you. Oh, and by the way, you business owners out there. We didn’t forget about you. Since you don’t know any better, we’re going to decide for you if you should allow smoking in your establishments. This is what the tobacco dealer’s trade organization is arguing against in Topeka Kansas right now.
Even though retail tobacco stores will be exempted from the proposed smoking ban, this is not good enough.
Topeka city council members plan to act on the ordinance September 29. They will hear public comment about it at forums on September 21 and 28.
"We want to go on record opposing this ordinance for many reasons, not the least of which is that the statistics and so-called studies being cited by the pro-smoking ban forces need to be thoroughly vetted for accuracy. People tend to ccept these generally false or misleading claims without challenging them. For every claim against smoking, secondhand smoke or the positive economic impact of smoking bans, there is at least one survey or scientific study that says otherwise," said Chris McCalla, legislative director of IPCPR. "For example, even the Federal Reserve Bank says smoking bans can hurt businesses."
McCalla cited obesity as the nation’s number one health problem, including many of those generally attributed to smoking. According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control, medical costs associated with obesity have increased from $78 billion in 1998 to $147 billion in 2006. Two-thirds of adults and some 20 percent of children in the United States are now overweight or obese.
"Does that mean government should prevent fat people from overeating or consuming high calorie foods? Of course not. It is not government’s place to tell us how to live or how to run our businesses. A business owner, not the government, has the right to decide if smoking will be allowed on his premises. When government interferes with that right, it begins sliding down the slippery slope of constitutional compromise which leads to the continued and growing loss of rights across the board," said McCalla. "Just look around you to see growing erosion of our rights as United States citizens."
In addition to proposing to tax food items such as sugary soft drinks, the CDC suggests banning television sets from children’s bedrooms.
"That’s just as intrusive, ridiculous and dangerous as legislative smoking bans. If you don’t want to be exposed to smoke, don’t go places where you might expect it. Patronize businesses that don’t permit smoking. That’s their right… and that’s your right. But government does not have the right to tell a business that it should or should not ban smoking. The constitution is on our side on this one," McCalla said.
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.
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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.
Spot On
Great article Kevin!
I agree 100%. We all need to stand up and fight against all of this fascism that is running rampant. It goes a lot deeper than smoking, they are trying to totally run our lives for us. It started with the smoking bans and now it is reaching out into other things.
Every one needs to start standing up for ALL of our rights because they are slowly taking them away one by one in this supposed ‘Free’ country. It won’t be long before they start going after other rights that the anti smoking crowd will care about.
Somewhere along the way Governments and Elected Representatives have forgot that their are our servants, instead of thinking that we are their serfs.
WE PAY THIER FAT SALARIES
Thanks guys. I enjoyed posting this one.
I think pipe smokers and cigar smokers must separate themselves from the ready rolled cigarette industry. I have mentioned this on other sites only to be shot down.