The Stogie Guys

Yesterday, a federal judge slapped down the Food & Drug Administration’s new tobacco warning labels as a violation of the Constitution’s free-speech protections. The legal challenge was brought by five tobacco companies, including some of the largest cigarette makers.

The new FDA labels, which take up half of the surface area on a pack of cigarettes, were scheduled to debut in September. Proposed last year, they were full color photos (including images of a cadaver with a sewn-up chest, diseased lungs and gums, and cigarette smoke drifting around an infant) accompanied by a “Quit Now” toll-free phone number.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s ruling sharply criticized the FDA for misrepresenting the labels. In a key footnote, he wrote, “Although the FDA conveniently refers to these graphic images as ‘graphic warnings,’ characterizing these graphic images as ‘warnings’ is inaccurate and unfair as they are more about shocking and repelling than warning.”

Later in the 19-page decision, Leon wrote, “The graphic images here were neither designed to protect the consumer from confusion or deception, nor to increase consumer awareness of smoking risks; rather, they were crafted to evoke a strong emotional response calculated to provoke the viewer to quit or never start smoking.”

In concluding that the labels were a violation of the First Amendment, Leon wrote, “The government has failed to carry both its burden of demonstrating a compelling interest and its burden of demonstrating that the rule is narrowly tailored to achieve a constitutionally permissible form of compelled commercial speech.”

Analysis

While not specifically related to cigars, this ruling has significant implications for all FDA regulation of tobacco, showing that there are limits to the government’s seemingly endless war on tobacco.

Judge Leon’s frequent criticism of FDA misrepresentations is particularity important, finally putting the brakes on the anti-tobacco movement’s attempt to play fast and loose with the facts. Critically, it sets a precedent that anti-tobacco regulations must be fact-based, and can’t merely be designed to oppose smoking.

Left unsaid was the hypocrisy of how anti-tobacco advocates frequently point back to supposed scientific misrepresentations of tobacco companies many decades ago, but now are the ones who frequently rely on suspect scientific conclusions and dubious logic. For example, the FDA’s own study released in October 2010 found that although the labels may stir the emotions of smokers, they might not cause smokers to quit.

For cigars, whose often ornate and decorative packaging is steeped in tradition, the limits on labels is even more important than it is for cigarettes. And with the FDA currently moving to regulate cigars like cigarettes, this ruling could be critical to limiting the damage done to to cigars until H.R. 1639 becomes law.

–Patrick S

photo credit: FDA

The professional anti-tobacco activists are on the march, and their target is your right as an adult to enjoy a premium cigar. Here are three recent stories that show that no matter what they say to appeal to reasonable people, their goal is always the same: restricting your free choice as an adult to use tobacco.

Campus Smoking Bans Spread

Over 600 colleges in the U.S., supposed bastions of multiculturalism and tolerance, have banned smoking on campus. Those in favor of such bans will claim they protect people from secondhand smoke, but their actions show that such a claim isn’t true.

Campus bans routinely include both outdoor and indoor spaces, and make no distinction between instances when others could possibly be impacted and when they definitely are not. Proving that paternalism and the desire to control adults’ behavior (even when no one else is affected) drives such bans, one Florida college official attempted to justify extending the campus smoking ban to personal cars by saying, “We don’t want your car to be a safe haven, where you do any activity you want as long as you’re in your car.”

Public Health Official: Smoking is More Dangerous than Suicide

How dogged and single-minded are anti-tobacco zealots in their advocacy against smoking? Take a look at Dr. Gregory Calkins, director of the Miami University Student Health Center. In response to a question about the dangers of hookah smoking, he actually said this: “First, smoking is the single most harmful thing we can voluntarily do to our bodies. It is most definitively the most dangerous thing one person can choose to partake in.”

Fortunately, one student wrote a letter to the editor calling out Dr. Calkins’ idiocy and providing a list of things that one could do to oneself that would cause immediate death, all of which would be, according to a good doctor, more harmful than smoking. Citizens of Ohio, your tax dollars are paying this man’s salary.

Federal Health Bureaucrats: States Should Ban Smoking in Cars

Campuses aren’t the only ones banning smoking in cars. The federal government is trying to get into that game too. According to the Associated Press, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now advocates that all states pass laws preventing adults from smoking in cars when children are present. But don’t think for a second that their quest will end there.

First, the same logic that would justify a car smoking ban would also support a ban on smoking in the home when children are present. After all, people spend far more time in the home than in cars, so exposure is likely to be greater there. Second, remember that these people also subscribe to the theory that “third-hand smoke” can be just as harmful as “second-hand” or “environmental tobacco smoke.” As one car expert points out, given that a child could be in a car (or house) at any point in time after someone smoked there, total home and car smoking bans may not be far off.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

An important milestone was reached yesterday. The number of co-sponsors on H.R. 1639—federal legislation that would protect premium cigars from Food & Drug Administration (FDA) regulations—hit 150. That means almost 35% of the U.S. House of Representatives is co-sponsoring this bipartisan bill.

Ever since June 2009 when President Obama signed the “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act,” my colleagues and I have written ad nauseam about the danger of granting the FDA jurisdiction over handmade cigars. In fact, our warnings on the subject date back to the summer of 2007, when a Senate panel brought national attention to the issue.

Why have we been so outspoken and persistent in our objection to FDA regulation of cigars? According to an FDA spokesperson, the agency would make cigars subject to registration, product and ingredient listing, additional taxes, and premarket review requirements. Such regulation would be devastating to the cigar industry, and in particular to boutique cigars and the creation of new blends.

The proposition of these regulations also shows a complete misunderstanding of the handmade artisanal nature of premium cigars on the part of FDA bureaucrats. “Ingredient listing” would be nearly impossible beyond “100% tobacco” since blends are regularly tweaked to provide consistent flavor from one year to the next. Further, even if blends aren’t changed, the chemical composition of tobacco leaves changes from harvest to harvest, meaning any disclosure of “ingredients” beyond tobacco would be either completely stifling or totally meaningless.

Similarly, by forcing new cigars to go through a costly FDA approval process, the now constant stream of new cigar blends would grind to a halt. Suddenly, instead of releasing small batch blends, cigar makers would be forced to focus on large runs that they think would have mass appeal after a time-consuming approval process.

Since this issue has come to the fore, our discussions with cigar makers, retailers, and industry leaders suggest a growing consensus: FDA regulation is the single greatest threat facing the cigar industry.

So if your representative is not currently one of the 150 co-sponsors of H.R. 1639 (and if your senators are not co-sponsors of the companion bill in the U.S. Senate, S. 1461) please contact them immediately. The very survival of the cigar industry as we know it may depend on the outcome of these efforts to protect cigars from FDA regulation.

–Patrick A

photo credit: Flickr

In 2010, Rocky Patel bought a 50% share in EO Brands, maker of such lines as EO 601, Cubao, Murcielago, and Mi Barrio (all made at Don Pepin Garcia’s My Father Cigars factory in Nicaragua). Yesterday, Eddie Ortega, co-founder of EO Brands along with Erik Espinosa, announced he was leaving the company and starting his own outfit called Ortega Cigars.

“I’ve wanted to do this for quite some time and now is the right time,” Ortega told Cigar Aficionado. “Eric [Espinosa] is like my brother, but I wanted to be independent.” His new company will be headquartered in Sunrise, Florida, just north of Miami. A buyout of his share in EO Brands is being finalized.

Ortega’s new website has already announced three cigar lines. The first, due in March, is the Series D, which will feature a San Andreas maduro wrapper around Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos. Ortega also announced two other lines, Brotherhood and Aftershock, but details were hard to come by. To get some information on the other lines, I touched base with Eddie to see what he is planning.

As for Brotherhood, Ortega tells me he doesn’t have the blend yet, but plans to soon. “I just wanted to start promoting the project because it is for a great cause. I want to somehow help out our military heroes and their families. Fifty percent of all profits will be donated to some of the organizations that help our military men and their families,” Ortega told me. He also said that Aftershock is also still in development.

Ortega plans to keep his company small. He says he already has 100 accounts lined up and wants to limit his exposure to around 300 stores. “I don’t want to open a zillion accounts…just good retailers that support the product. That would be cool with me.”

If that happens, he told me he might not even attend the annual IPCPR Trade Show where new cigar companies usually go to promote their brand and open new accounts. At the moment he is handling his own distribution, but he is “in talks with a couple of distributors, but only to distribute to certain areas in the country.”

The Series D is being made at the My Father Cigars factory in Nicaragua, which is run by the Pepin family, his longtime collaborators at EO Cigars. As for future lines, he said he was “planning to make some brands with other factories.”

Ortega described the Series D as an “awesome blend…We are using some fillers from Jalapa and Estelí that are crazy good and help create a profile that is full-bodied with lots of spice, flavor, and aroma. I know the consumer will love this one!”

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

StogieGuys.com has confirmed that General Cigar, Altadis, Oliva, and Davidoff have told retailers that prices will be going up on many (though not necessarily all) of their cigars.

Altadis price increases ranged from 2.5% to 5%. Altadis USA  makes Montecristo, H. Upmann, Romeo y Julieta, Trinidad, Siglo, Te-Amo, and many other well-known brands. Retailers also have been notified that Davidoff—maker of Davidoff, Winston Churchill, Camacho, Avo, and other lines—is also increasing prices.

General Cigar/STG, the largest producer of premium handmade cigars for import into the United States, raised prices around 3% earlier this week. However, the company’s CAO lines—only recently integrated into the company (details here)—were not included in the price hike. The CAO Cameroon and CAO Maduro cigar prices are decreasing, while the prices of other large cigars sold under the CAO name remain unchanged. According to the company, the increases were implemented “to offset the rising cost of tobacco, manufacturing, and logistics.”

Tobacconists we spoke with didn’t think the price hikes were unexpected. One shop owner felt that many companies had paused normal price increases immediately after the SCHIP tax went into effect to ease the burden on retailers, making the new hike understandable.

Another cigar shop owner was supportive of the increased prices “as long as these companies start committing the necessary financial resources to protect the premium cigar industry from being regulated and taxed out of business by the government.”  General Cigar, Davidoff, Altadis, and Oliva are all listed as “friends of CRA” on the Cigar Rights of America website. [Disclosure: StogieGuys.com is listed as a “CRA Partner” on the same page.]

The practical impact of a 5% increase is that a cigar previously sold to the shop wholesale for $3 would now be $3.15, generally resulting in an increase of the retail price from $6 to $6.30. Time will tell whether consumers are willing to absorb the increase without changing their purchasing habits, or if they respond by purchasing less expensive cigars and/or decreasing the frequency of their cigar purchases.

[UPDATE: Originally this article noted a report on another site that Alec Bradley VP of Sales George Sosa said the company was planning a future price increase of an undetermined amount.  That story has since been pulled on the basis that Alec Bradley withdrew confirmation.]

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Cigar Paradise came to Earth on November 19 in the form of the Ybor City Heritage and Cigar Festival, an annual event held in the center of Ybor City just outside downtown Tampa. Cigar Dave broadcasting live, a celebrity appearance by Rocky Patel himself, dozens of cigar vendors with special deals, a classic car show, a live band rocking some Sinatra, tents selling beer and burgers, and the sweet smell of burning stogies everywhere might be how you imaged cigar smokers’ heaven, and I can tell you that’s exactly what it was.

As soon as I arrived on this festive scene I lit an Urbano Corojo and began soaking up the sites. Over 2,000 were in attendance and though it was a packed house, there was plenty of room to maneuver and see everything that needed to be seen. Cigar retailers and manufacturers had set up tents all over the place, nearly all of them advertising specials and discounts on their products. As the voice of Cigar Dave boomed across the festival and patrons consumed Cuban food and discussed their favorite tobacco blends, I found myself browsing the tents and encountered deals everywhere I looked.

Upmann 4-pack samplers were selling for as low as $12 and you could find practically any kind of Cuesta Rey for around $5 a stick. I saw 24-pack sampler boxes sold in cedar humidors for $99, the Rocky Patel tent was stacked with boxes and boxes of stogies, and the Arturo Fuente tent displayed a large sampling of their line (a box of the 8-5-8 was nearly sold out). Cigar Rights of America was there signing up tons of new members and I found several vendors who didn’t sell anything even remotely related to cigars but had purchased tables to take advantage of the large crowd.

The center of the attraction was Cigar Dave’s stage. With dozens of tables surrounding him and a live band sitting ready to burst into a medley of classic show tunes, many patrons were happy to sit and smoke cigars while listening to Cigar Dave who was joined on stage by Rocky Patel. Later on Cigar Dave hosted an auction, selling everything from boxes of premium cigars to autographed footballs to expensive pieces of jewelry.

Here he is auctioning a box of 1976 Arturo Fuente Don Carlos brand cigars while Mr. Patel stands to the side signing autographs and posing for photos with fans. The ’76 Fuente cigars sold for $425 and demand was enough that the Fuente family put a second box of 76ers on the auction block and sold them too.

Other attractions included three Tampa Humidor tents, one including sofas and a large screen TV. A classic car show that boasted several beauties including a pristine ’65 Mustang in white and a spotless light blue ’57 Chevrolet Bel Air. The buzz on the street was that over 2,000 were in attendance and everywhere you went you could hear men exchanging philosophies on cigar flavors, blends, sizes and prices. There was a lot of excitement in all corners of the festival and a lot of energy throughout the day. With ideal weather for an outdoor festival it was the perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

The highlight for me was that I was fortunate to shake hands with Rocky Patel and have my picture taken with the man himself. As I climbed to the stage I offered my hand and said, “Mr. Patel, I enjoy your stogies very much.” Patel, with a kind smile on his face, replied modestly as we shook hands. “Thank you, I appreciate hearing that.” He stood patiently and posed while my father fiddled with the camera, never impatient, never rushed. My impression was that Patel was as happy to be there as all of the patrons and vendors. He may be the Don of a lucrative cigar empire and I a lowly cigar blogger, but on that day I realized that not only were Rocky Patel and I both brothers of the leaf, we always have been. And that brotherhood, that unspoken camaraderie among cigar enthusiasts is what makes a celebration like the Ybor City Cigar Festival such a special event.

Thanks for a great day, Tampa. I’ll surely see you soon.

–Mark M

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Last week I was in the Dominican Republic touring General Cigar’s facilities, where La Gloria Cubana, Macanudo, Partagas, and a number of other well-known cigars are made.

Even though it’s not the first cigar factory I’ve visited, it still amazes me how many people are involved in the creation of just one cigar that sells for under $10 (often far less than that). Here are just a few of those steps:

La Gloria Cubana (and El Rico Habano) are rolled in a separate room from Macanudo and General

A La Gloria roller cuts the wrapper before rolling it around the bunched cigar.

Cigars are pressed after bunching (and before rolling) to create a solid shape and even draw. Wooden molds used to be used, but now almost every factory relies on plastic molds which last longer and are more uniform.

Production numbers are kept and quality checked. As you can see, in just three days over 60,000 cigars have been rolled.

One of the most impressive things I saw was one of their tobacco warehouses, where tobacco ages and is stored. In this particular warehouse, they estimated there was $50 million worth of tobacco. At any given point General Cigar says they have $120 million dollars of tobacco stored.

Each bale in the warehouse has a label with key information about the tobacco. This particular label features Connecticut wrapper leaf from 2008.

Curing tobacco is what begins its process from plant to cigar. Here aged tobacco is cured in a heat controlled room with misting water and plenty of airflow.

Wrapper leaves are sorted according to size and color. Size determines the size of the cigar that can be rolled, while color is more of an aesthetic consideration. For example, Genral Cigar won

Fermenting tobacco is what takes it to the final stages before it can be rolled. Fermenting tobacco generates its own heat and must be watched closely or else it can be ruined. Tubes are used to take the temperature of the tobacco.

That’s just a few of the many steps that it takes to produce a handmade cigar. Next time you smoke one, be sure to take a moment to consider the many steps it took and the attention to detail that was necessary to produce a fine cigar. A mistake in any step in the process can ruin what would otherwise be an excellent smoke.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys