I've always liked good things. I suspect that I sucked it out of my mother's milk. I started my adventure with discovering taste while still in high school, with tea. Then came the time to taste wines, whiskey and even e-liquid flavors and coffee. However, nothing gave me as much pleasure as smoking cigars, discovering their depth and further flavors. I love to collect cigars, browse my collections and light a well-dressed cigar once in a while.
Smoking is a very personal moment during the day for me. A moment that I have only for myself. An hour of relaxation and calmness, detachment from the world and everyday activities.
It is heartening to hear that there is life after a smoking ban for retailers.
But it is also important that the battle to squeeze out every concession from the authorities continues apace so that cigar retailers can continue to run legitimate and legal businesses, and cigar smokers can continue to get hold of one of the planet’s most luxurious commodities.
The right of cigar retailers to allow customers to try potential premium priced purchases is a key one, and a special enclosed room in a venue that is likely to contain people who smoke would seem to be perfectly reasonable.
Not even the most intolerant antismoker should begrudge cigar smokers such a facility while the product remains legal.
While the overwhelming vote in the British parliament for a total ban in England and Wales was bitterly disappointing, it is becoming increasingly clear that the implications haven’t been thought through properly and there are grey areas in the proposed legislation, and therefore grounds for sensible manoeuvre.
There are also potential loopholes to exploit.
What is essential, though, is that we are clear what the ban does and doesn’t entail and we don’t over-react.
There have been stories coming from Scotland, for instance, of pubs who have removed their cigarette machines because they thought they were no longer permitted to sell cigarettes.
Presumably they’re not selling cigars from the bar any more, either.
All these rules can of course end up as nonsense. It was suggested, for instance, that actors wouldn’t be able to smoke while filming indoors. That would mean a Stalinist-rewriting of history as characters such as Churchill would no longer be allowed to hold his iconic cigar.
It will still be okay to show soldiers killing civilians with machine guns, however, or knife fights.
This is clearly because they’re not a threat to your health obviously.
