Stogie News: Ohio ‘Investigates’ Reds Cigar Celebration
5 Oct 2010
As we’ve documented before, there’s a long tradition of sports teams celebrating a championship, gold medal, or pennant with a few victory cigars. So everything seemed normal when the Cincinnati Reds clinched the National League Central Division one week ago.
According to media reports, team owner Bob Castellini passed out victory cigars in the locker room and a number of players lit up celebratory smokes. But now the Cincinnati Department of Health has announced it will investigate the baseball club for violations of Ohio state law.
Apparently, five anonymous callers to the state’s smoking ban tip line complained about the cigar-filled celebration. There’s no indication that any of the anonymous tipsters were present at the celebration. It could have been anti-smoking militants, or maybe it was disgruntled Cardinals, Cubs, Astros, Brewers, or Pirates fans.
Under state law, public investigators must now return to the location of the reported violation within 30 days, at approximately the same time, to look for violations. The absurdity of an investigator stopping by the locker room when it is empty or during a playoff game has drawn fire from critics.
“Cigar Rights of America calls upon Mayor Mark Mallory and the Cincinnati City Council to rebuke the city Health Department, and direct them to stop this senseless investigation and waste of public dollars,†stated J. Glynn Loope, Executive Director of Cigar Rights of America. “This dramatizes why members of the Ohio legislature need to amend the Ohio Clean Indoor Air Act, to allow for common sense exemptions from this nanny state piece of legislation.â€
photo credit: Fox19
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A sad day in America when celebrating a basball pennant with cigars is illegal. I suppose the anti-smoking nazis in Ohio would prefer if the Cardinals had won the NL central?
Things like this are evidence of where our nation is headed in the long run. People need to wake up whether they smoke cigars/ pipes or not because when punishing cigar smokers is old news, some other aspect of life will be the new target.
When one person loses a freedom, we all lose one.
I love how these anti smoking folks think they're not being completely transparent with their "keep the product legal but make using it illegal anywhere" approach to this. That way they can pretend we're not headed towards a new prohibition on tobacco. Go ahead, folks make this product illegal already so we can see the rise of organized crime outfits built around tobacco send some users to jail, divert law enforcement to enforcing the new laws…and then a few years later realize how stupid it all was. How different are these anti-tobacco folks from the Temperance League of the 1920s?
The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.
Eventually we are ALL going to be guilty of violating something, some obscure regulation, prohibition or policy, somewhere at some time, and will face the penalties. The society as depicted in "Minority Report" is surely not too far away.
Ridiculous! That's all I can say to what happened! The above commenters are all correct. All hail Nannies!