Heard in the Humidor for August 17 - 23

Highlights of the week in cigars and smoking.

Los Angeles -- If you thought smoking bans have gone too far, you haven’t seen anything yet. Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks, the chief of police in the city from 1997-2002, introduced two items on Friday, August 8, with the intention of eliminating smoking in both the city (3.85 million residents) and in Los Angeles County (9.95 million):

1. He introduced a motion (No. 08-2123) that asks "the City Attorney be requested to prepare and present an ordinance to enact a second-hand smoking law effective throughout the City which would limit public exposure to secondhand smoke in all public areas and common areas where people congregate including, but not limited to indoor and outdoor businesses, hotels, parks, apartment common areas, restaurants, bars, and beaches."
2. He introduced a resolution (No. 08-0002-S130) that asks "Be it Resolved, with the concurrence of the Mayor, that by the adoption of this Resolution, the City of Los Angeles hereby URGES the County of Los Angeles to enact a second-hand smoking law effective throughout the County which would limit public exposure to secondhand smoke in all public areas where people congregate including, but not limited to indoor and outdoor businesses, hotels, parks, apartment common areas, restaurants and bars, and beaches."

What's the impact of this? In the city of Los Angeles, it could mean for cigarette, cigar and pipe smokers that:

• Smoking would be prohibited in all indoor businesses, including smokeshops, as is the case now in the state of Washington and in Kansas City. It would certainly mean the demise of many cigar stores in the area.
• Smoking would be prohibited in all parks, which will certainly include golf courses; that's right, no more smoking on golf courses located in the city of Los Angeles, whether public or private!
• Smoking would be banned in the common areas of apartment buildings, raising the specter of police knocking on your door -- anytime of the day or night -- to ask if you’ve been smoking in the hallway. The call will have been placed by your non-smoking neighbor, telling the police you’ve broken the law...whether you have or not.
• Parks is asking for a ban on smoking anywhere people congregate. Does that mean arresting or citing someone for smoking on a city street? Certainly it has to apply on street corners...in parking lots...near buildings...anywhere some officer wants to arrest or cite you.

Make no mistake; if an ordinance is proposed and adopted, the penalties will either be an infraction -- resulting in a citation, similar to a traffic ticket -- or a misdemeanor, which require an arrest and carry penalties including fines or possibly even jail time.

Our best estimates are that a City ordinance of the type that Parks is requesting will affect about 384,000 City residents and up to 989,000 in the County, depending on what incorporated cities inside the County do. If you wish to help keep this horrifying limit on civil liberties from becoming law, we have set up a separate site at: www.WeAreNotCriminals.com. There you will find complete instructions on messages you can send today to Councilman Parks concerning his drive to prohibit consuming a legal product -- tobacco -- in the City of Los Angeles as well as his request for the County to do the same.

>> Camacho Cigars is famous for its Camacho Corojo and a series of other blends using tobaccos grown on its Honduran farms at the Rancho Tabacos Jamastran. In 2005, however, Julio Eiroa decided to do something different as a holiday gift to the many tobacconists who had help make Camacho such an important brand.

He had the idea to make a blend that wasn’t all Honduran-grown, but instead used a Cameroon wrapper for a different style of taste and texture. The Camacho Select was born and was such a hit with the tobacconists who tried it that it was very quickly added to the standard Camacho production line.

Three years later and Eiroa decided to update the blend, using a darker Cameroon wrapper with Honduran-grown binder and filler leaves. The result is medium in body, with a nutty and earthy flavor. The brand's presentation has been upgraded considerably, now double-banded with a footer that reads "Select" and "Julio Eiroa" and packed in elegant, trapezoidal boxes of 21 cigars each.

The Camacho Select remains affordable, however. The same five sizes -- Churchill, Lonsdale, Robusto, Super Robusto and Torpedo -- are offered, with retail pricing from $5.60 for the Lonsdale up to $7.35 for the Torpedo.

>> Short fillers: Find our latest tasting review, of new cigars that were the stars of the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association convention & trade show, in our News & Views archives for August 14.

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Heard in the Humidor is a publication of Perelman, Pioneer & Company. Copyright 2008; All rights reserved.

Rich Perelman

8/18/08

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