Tobacco’s Front Lines
-
Kevin Godbee - Mar 5, 2014
- 6 min read
Fred Brown
To quote an old military theory, wars fought on several fronts are not won on any.
Now take the battle lines for tobacco. It is not news that there is a war afoot against the use of tobacco in any form.
Just recently, CVS, one of the largest retail pharmaceutical outlets in the nation, decided to rid its shelves of tobacco products. In the announcement, directors of the company said they realized removing tobacco products would cost the company billions in sales. That’s a B as in billions.
Thus, one of the last bastions of “over-the-counter” or OTC “codger” tobacco products and pipes is disappearing into thin air, signaling the end of an era.
Some of us are old enough to remember when pipes (Yello-Bole, Kaywoodie, etc.) filled out cardboard displays at the cash registers and along the walls in drug stores. Tobacco of every description lined the shelves.
But, the bulletin that CVS is emptying its shelves of tobacco is not exactly the hottest news on the planet.
It was announced just before Valentine’s Day that CVS Caremark planned to remove all tobacco from its 7,600 stores by Oct. 1, 2014. And the chain was fully aware that this would cost the company $2 billion in annual tobacco sales.
This is not the only fight tobacco is facing. Other pharmaceutical chains are sure to follow, opening up even more fronts against the besieged leaf.
State legislatures across the country are also upgrading their fight by joining the anti-tobacco forces in attempting to finally and for all time do away with tobacco in the U.S.
Most restaurants, bars, places of business and many public parks and museums across the nation are now off limits to smokers.
And more anti-smoking laws are making their way to state legislatures to tighten the screws even further. Kentucky, once a bellwether tobacco state, is facing tighter restrictions on tobacco.
Recently, Kentucky lawmakers have been pressed to eliminate all smoking in all Kentucky workplaces, joining some 24 other states considering similar laws.
Basically, the “Smoke-Free Kentucky Coalition” is pushing for lawmakers to make it unlawful even to “smoke indoors.”
Could that ultimately mean one’s own home?
Several Kentucky towns have already banned “secondhand” smoke in public areas, as well as in working environments.
Earlier in February, a University of California cell biologist announced the evils of thirdhand smoke.
Yes, you read that correctly. Not secondhand smoke, but thirdhand smoke. Now we enter the age of “thirdhand” smoke.
Thirdhand smoke, the biologist reported in a news release, is the accumulation of chemicals and particles from smoke on clothing, furniture and anything else the “tobacco smoke” touches.
The report claimed that thirdhand smoke “lingers on surfaces for at least two months, even after the surfaces are cleaned,” and that not only can you not clean the thirdhand smoke off your tabletop, but it ages over time and becomes “progressively more toxic.”
It may or may not be noteworthy that the thirdhand report was published a month after the University of California banned tobacco, as well as so-called e-cigarettes, in any form on all of its campuses. And tests were carried out on three-week-old mice locked up in cages with some ventilation. The cages, the report said, contained objects slathered in secondhand smoke.
Now, Maryland is considering legislation that would ban smoking in many of its public parks and museums, and Alabama’s Legislature is considering a “Smoke-Free Air Act” that would ban smoking in public, period.
In Ann Arbor, Mich., the City Council is considering an ordinance that would make it illegal to smoke near bus stops and city building entrances.
An existing ordinance in the county already outlaws smoking near building entrances, ventilation systems and windows. The new ordinance, however, gives the Ann Arbor Police Department the power to stop a person and issue a ticket for $50 if anyone lights up in a smoke-free zone. The ticket comes only after the smoker has been asked to leave the smoke-free zone and refuses.
Now, The Smoking Bans are not new. They have been around since forever. There are accounts that even the Puritans banned smoking in the street in the 1600s.
And in some nations, smoking was punishable by death.
Tobacco, of course, has been around a long, long time. Native Americans handed Christopher Columbus a pipe when he landed in America. They told him they had been chewing and smoking the leaves for, oh, 5,000 years, for their health.
So, evidently The Bans and The Leaf have been at odds for lo these millennia.
America has seen the results of prohibition. It didn’t work with alcohol in the 1920s, as seen an interesting paper by an Auburn University professor.
The report says that Prohibition failed with alcohol and won’t work with tobacco. That paper can be found here.
It is also interesting to note that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has dropped most of its statistics and reporting on tobacco.
The leaf is no longer included in most of its crop reports, leaving the inquisitive to run down state statistics on tobacco for themselves.
And just recently, North Carolina tobacco growers were highly upset to learn that the state’s Attorney General Roy Cooper and other attorneys general across the nation support a move to exclude tobacco from an upcoming important and very large U.S. international trade agreement.
The National Association of Attorneys General recently wrote to U.S. Trade Rep. Michael Froman, saying that including tobacco in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement could “jeopardize the states’ ability to regulate tobacco products.”
Many attorneys general from U.S. states and territories signed the letter. Agricultural experts claim that excluding tobacco from the agreement would put a crimp in the farm family’s ability to sell tobacco in the international marketplace. This could also lead to eliminating many other U.S. agricultural products from trade agreements.
The point is: The anti-tobacco zealots won’t stop until they have snuffed out the last cigarette, destroyed the last field of tobacco and relegated the pipe smoker to history.
We have no one to blame for this set of circumstances except ourselves. Pipe smokers are a small, easy-going bunch. But without getting too political, perhaps it is time to put together a political action committee of some sort, and then hit the halls of the Capitol with pipe-smoking lobbyists.
This is just a thought: If every pipe smoker in America donated say a buck to the effort, maybe that would fund someone savvy enough to take to the halls of Congress and pitch our message, which is that pipe tobacco is not cigarette tobacco; pipe tobacco is not smoked in the same fashion as cigarettes or even cigars; ours is, for the most part, a contemplative experience.
Statistics indicate that young people continue to experiment with tobacco. The young are intrigued with pipes and tobacco in a far more diverse way than, say, your grandfather, or even yourself.
Would it not be better that they migrate to the tobacco pipe instead of the pot pipe now legal in Colorado?
We are in a different time. It is, perhaps, on the order of what the cigar and pipe-smoking Sigmund Freud had in mind when he said: “Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.”
|
|
Written by Kevin Godbee
13 Responses
Recent Posts
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.
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! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! 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.
When we speak to our state legislators about this, as I recently did, we find ourselves running up against a brick wall. Much of the problem, I was told, comes from the insurance companies which are noting the increase in tobacco related illnesses and deaths. And we all know that this comes principally from cigarettes, but all tobacco gets charged with the same brush. Cigarette smokers do have a higher morbidity and mortality than non-smokers, and the financial burden for their care is spread out over all those insured by the company, so the companies have a strong financial interest in getting rid of tobacco. It is this lobby that is pressuring the legislators quite heavily. I haven’t spoken with many legislators about this, just one, but I suspect that they are more likely to tell you that this is attributable more to the financial interests involved then to the morality police. The bottom line is – the bottom line, and I suspect that when the dust settles down we’ll find that money talks, and this is what the money is saying. And we know that the Surgeon General’s report says that pipe smokers live longer, but I doubt that the state legislatures will be able to mandate pipe smoking for everyone, so it’s easier for them to simply ban tobacco in all it’s forms.
Thanks for the well organized and nicely written article. Not so much for the message. 🙁
So who can I throw money at to make this problem go away? Politics is full time job and as a 26 year old, I sadly just don’t have the time to keep up with all this muck.
The other attack on smoking is insurance companies. While some life insurance companies are more forgiving towards pipe and cigar smokers over cigarette smokers, health insurance seems to be less forgiving. They significantly are increasing premiums of all smokers.
Also check out WebMD (http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/effects-of-smoking-pipes-and-cigars) that argues that pipe and cigar smoking is just as harmful, if not more harmful, than cigarette smoking. It’s as if they forget the basic pharmacological tenet that mode of administration makes a difference.
I see it as merely symptomatic of the much larger issue of where our head is at, as a species. And it doesn’t give me a lot of hope.
Good article Fred Particularly the link to the thesis regarding Prohibition’s failure.
^ they also seem to forget about the difference in number of additives between cigarettes and pipes/cigars
Well organized chronology … and very disheartening. Loved the Freud quote. He was exactly right.
While we all know that the 2nd hand, and now 3rd hand smoke studies are more than likely fudged and bogus (pipes and cigars certainly never figured in either) we will not be likely to properly refute these. A consistent message to be maintained is essential for those of us who smoke:
One; there is no smoke anywhere that is good for anyone, and smoke is something we all get exposed to. Lungs were designed ONLY to process air. Asian women have been shown to get cancer from wok smoke. And who doesn’t like a good fire in a fireplace in the winter? Car exhaust alone is a biggie, especially in urban areas. Diesel gas fumes have been shown to be cancerous. So how is it that tobacco smoke stands alone as a contaminant?
Two; there are plenty of synthetic materials we come into contact with daily which are likely toxic. Think plastics, think cleaning products. Think of appliances and cars with a multitude of components. If these things were given the scrutiny that tobacco has received, and then eliminated from use, our technology, our economy, and our whole way of life would also be eliminated.
An article with sad tidings indeed. Still another good reason to establish a secure “cellar” and start filling it up.
Think of the days of prohibition when so many hidden closets were constructed. Will there eventually be Smoke Nazis who invade your home and person checking on tobacco products and smoking equipment.
Still I wonder why marijuana is being approved.
Good article, no glad tidings here! I live in Kentucky and even though many are fighting these bans I do believe the writing is on the wall and the bans are a done deal. That in it self does not bother me as much as them not stopping there. Is my home the next place that I will be told that I may not smoke or chew? Am I going to be running afoul of the law when I fire up my cob hauling out hay to my cattle. My ancestors fought the whiskey tax and prohibition as well by moonshining! Am I destined to become an outlaw in my own home??? The government that governs best governs least! Hitler tried this crap once. Failed! Prohibition, Failed. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
I grow my own tobacco and store the seeds as insurance against total prohibition by totalitarians in government.
Excellent article. I have been smoking a pipe (and an occasional cigar) since I was 17 years old (38 years). My wife is now off cigs and now using e-cigs. When will the over reaching Communist Government of ours learn. I am quiet person that does not like to raise cane, but there comes a time when enough is enough. Let me know when and where to donate. Also, while I have the pulpit, isn’t it funny that Marijuana is starting to be legal and acceptable in more areas of our and wonderful and still free country? What they don’t understand is all the tax revenue they will lose. Grrr, it is time for me to fire up a bowl of English and pour me a glass of Makers Mark.
Obviously leadership of this current government’s backs are turned squarely on The US Constitution. It is small wonder to me that they are going to do what is best for you – as they see it. Hypocrisy has no conscience. Right is wrong and wrong is right. I should be checking out of this mess about right on time. Many of the founding Fathers were pipe smokers. I cannot imagine how they would react if they could watch what is happening in this country today to the rights of the individual. Third hand smoke my
_ _ _!