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Beverly Hills Cigar Club Offers Top 10 Champagne and Cigar Pairings for the Holidays  

Just in time for the holidays, the Beverly Hills Cigar Club (BHCC) is offering its 2010 Top 10 Champagne and Cigar Pairings: what to smoke and drink while you ring in the New Year.

BHCC's pairings involved identifying a champagne with a high rating in all price categories and then choosing a top rated cigar that would best complement that selection. Vin Lee, CEO, Beverly Hills Cigar Club, then determined the best match ups, finding the final choices included well known brands but also selections produced by boutique champagne houses and tobacco producers.

"In this day and age, not everyone can afford a $50 cigar and a $300 bottle of champagne," said Lee. "Complementing a wonderful glass of champagne with a great cigar for the holidays is something everyone should be able to enjoy."

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Schwarzenegger wows US troops on return to Iraq 

Arnold Schwarzenegger flew in to Iraq on a morale-boosting visit for US troops on Monday, drawing cheers from servicemen and women, some of whom were lucky enough to be gifted a cigar.

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EDITORIAL: Letting smokers smoke 

With a recession and record unemployment in full swing, with furloughs of city employees and the negative effect on their family budgets hanging over the heads; with revenue shortfalls threatening even more cuts; with all these and more, it's no wonder some residents hanker for a good cigar or a toke on a tobacco hookah. . . .

Long Beach was a pioneer in regulating smoking in public and in workplaces, and it appears the city will pioneer restrictions on where smokers can enjoy their habit. Let's hope they don't go that one toke over the line. Without too much more discussion - given the gravity of the economics of city budgeting - it's time to let smokers smoke, without inflicting their nasty habit on the rest of us.

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Smoking lounge rules on Long Beach Council agenda  

Smoke 'em if you got 'em - but only with a ventilation system and not if you're serving any food or beverages - may become Long Beach's new policy for the city's recently legalized smoking lounges.

Oh, and don't invite any of your friends - we're happy with the eight cigar lounges and four hookah bars that we have now, thank you - might also be added to the policy.

That last caveat could become the biggest challenge as the City Council tackles how to regulate smoking lounges Tuesday. The council's Economic Development and Finance Committee voted to recommend new smoking lounge regulations last week, but committee members were concerned about a proliferation of new lounges.

City attorneys and city staff said the city has limited legal right to restrict the number of lounges.

"Once we open this up, I think that there is the potential for other legitimate businesses to qualify under the regulations, and I think that is a consideration the council has to weigh," Director of Health and Human Services Ron Arias told the committee Wednesday.

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New smoking lounge rules raise questions for council committee 

Figuring out a way to allow existing smoking lounges to continue in Long Beach yet prevent more from opening is easier said than done, a City Council panel learned Wednesday afternoon.

The three-member Economic Development and Finance Committee got a first look at new regulations for smoking lounges, which the council voted to legalize in February, 15 years after Long Beach's groundbreaking ban on smoking in public places and workplaces went into effect. The full council will consider the lounge regulations next Tuesday.

The committee voted 2-1, with Councilwoman Rae Gabelich opposed, to recommend that the council approve the proposed regulations with a few changes, but was forced to stop short of implementing controls to prevent new smoking lounges from opening.

"You are old enough to make your own decisions," Gabelich said to several cigar lounge owners who attended Wednesday's meeting, "but I do not want any more of these anywhere in the city."

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• HEALTH: Tobacco Companies Have a Field Day in Indonesia 

When it comes to smoking, Indonesia remains the last paradise for a puff in Southeast Asia. Those addicted to cigarettes can openly light up in public places without worrying about tough anti-tobacco penalties found in the rest of the region.

This reality has been shaped by the power of local and multinational tobacco companies on the archipelago of some 224 million people.

At the finals for the recent ‘Mild Live Wanted 2009' countrywide talent contest, in the former colonial city of Bandung, competing musicians belted out their songs from around 3 p.m till midnight.

For Indonesia's small, yet vocal, anti-tobacco activists, these concerts - billed to promote local talent - offered more than music to fill their ears. They were the latest in a string of publicity drives of the powerful multinational tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI) in the country. . . .

The prospect of more deaths from this ”smoking epidemic” has still to move Jakarta, which is still to sign the world's first public health treaty - the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which has been in force since early 2005.

By contrast, this treaty has been signed by Indonesia's nine neighbours in the region, which include Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. . . .

But in other forms of entertainment, the publicity for tobacco companies are more direct, revealed Kania during a telephone interview from Jakarta. ”There was a film for teenagers last year where one of the actresses, who is still in junior high school, was smoking in scenes.”

Such an effort to glamorise smoking goes to extremes, at times. ”There are so many scenes of people smoking in Indonesian movies where the camera even zooms in to show the cigarette brand,” adds Kania. ”There is no regulation like in other countries.”

It is little wonder why a regional anti-tobacco lobby has described Southeast Asia's largest country as a ”cash cow” for the tobacco industry.

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Enjoying sidewalk beer and pipe tobacco in Hanoi 

Locals do not know exactly why foreign tourists like visiting the old streets. Some say because they are located in the center of the city, some say because of the 18th and 19th century French architecture. However, there is more to it. Tourists can enjoy things that are available only there. Those things are sidewalk beer and pipe tobacco. The area is rather small but always jubilant as foreign tourists and sidewalk beer shops appear almost everywhere.

Sidewalk beer shops have no tables, just some small chairs for people to sit and place their mugs and enjoy a pipe of tobacco. The pipes, usually made of bamboo or clay, typically consist of a small chamber . . .

The buzz created by the harsh tobacco and the icy crisp beer more than offsets the cold of winter in Hanoi. Moreover, while enjoying beer and tobacco on the sidewalk, tourists can discover the daily life of the residents, busy and bustling. . . .

Hanoi is getting colder and colder as winter comes and this is an ideal time to enjoy sidewalk beer together with pipe tobacco. Why not take a tour of the ancient streets and experience these exotic flavors to remember Hanoi forever?

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BELANGER: Race to Extinction 

Imagine for a moment, your stores' back bars and tobacco sections as they are today. Now remove all flavored SKUs -- the Black & Mild Wine and Cream cigars, the grape and peach Swisher Sweets, the coffee little cigars and the wintergreen moist snuff. How much revenue would you lose if this were to happen, not even counting the ancillary purchases that come with these items? And for a moment, remove menthol items from the racks as well. The tobacco category becomes barren.

Ask yourself this -- can the stores survive without these products, and the traffic and sales they bring in? Unless the stores have a stellar foodservice offer, the answer is most likely no.

If the convenience industry allows the FDA to push its limits on a recently enacted law, it may be the end of the important category -- at least as we know it today. . . .

The fate of all the flavored tobacco items in your stores is in your hands. Help the efforts of NACS, NATO, and other tobacco groups and manufacturers. Help elect lawmakers who stand for free enterprise and against the nanny-state. Inform your customers of impending legislation and its impact. It is imperative the industry does not let the FDA put a chokehold on the tobacco category in convenience stores.

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Cigar-loving mum-of-two Alison Cooper named new Imperial chief  

Alison Cooper will become the latest in the handful of women in charge of a FTSE 100 company when she takes the reins at Imperial Tobacco next May.

The 43-year-old mother of two, who admitted to a penchant for cigars, will replace longstanding chief executive Gareth Davis when he retires after 37 years at the Lambert & Butler cigarette maker.

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Light Up the Night at cigar street party 

A cigar street party, Light Up the Night, will benefit the Tampa Firefighters Museum and the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation.

The event will be from 7 to 11 p.m. Nov. 20 at the firefighters museum, 720 E. Zack St.

Jack Harris is the emcee for the evening, and cigar celebrities include Carlito Fuente Jr. from Tabacalera A. Fuente & Co., as well as Bobby and Eric Newman of J.C. Newman Cigars. The evening will include food, rum, beer, wine, cigars, entertainment by the Mainstream band, a silent auction of rare cigar items, a cigar-rolling contest and a charitable casino.

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Crackdown becomes a drag for clove smokers  

The band of clove smokers is small in South Florida. But as their cloves diminished, stick by stick, worries flared about how this new ban would affect the local culture in a place where partyers can still puff at nightclubs, in a state that has chosen not to levy taxes on tobacco.

``What Hollywood is to actors, Miami is to cigars,'' said William Carroll, manager at Vilar Cigar Shop in South Miami. ``We wonder if its cloves first, then what's next?''

Vilar Cigar smells like roasted coffee and boasts more than 200 types of tobacco. Less than 1 percent of buyers wanted cloves, Carroll said, so it made little difference profit-wise. The shop easily gave them up but remains wary about the future.

Signed in June, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Act gave retailers, manufacturers, and distributors three months to get rid of their flavored cigarettes -- or face warning letters, fines or prosecution.

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Smoky Air Back at an Omaha Bar  

For the first time since smoking was banned inside Omaha businesses, some are now legally lighting up. A special license has been granted to a Benson business, the first within Omaha city limits.

A smoky bar hasn't been seen in Omaha in quite some time. The city outlawed the habit at such places in June 2008. Strict tobacco retailers were the exception.

"I can't tell you how many times I'd be at a bar, and I'd just reek. I didn't really care for that, so I was pretty happy they banned it."

A state ban took effect this past June. By September, it was amended with a loophole for business owners like John Larkin of Jake’s Cigar Bar & Spirits, 62nd & Maple.. "It's right in our name, Jake's Cigars,” he says, “and to not be able to smoke in the business was very tough, and now that we can, we expect cigar sales to go back up."

Monday, Larkin was granted a license to allow cigar smoking.A business qualifies with a class c liquor license, earning at least 10% of business from sales of tobacco or tobacco products. They cannot serve food and must have a walk-in humidor. A license costs $1,000, and it does not allow cigarette smoking.

With the first such license granted in Omaha, some familiar arguments resurface. “There is absolutely no safe level of second-hand smoke exposure," says Mark Welsch, president of the Group to Alleviate Smoking Pollution.

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HOLY SMOKES: Biker John's ministry offers church, cigars and rock 'n' roll  

For those who find traditional church a little stifling, Sunday morning services at Cork's Cigar Bar at 425 Old Main St. in downtown Bradenton could be just the place to get a good shot of Christianity.

It's called the Church of the Faithful Few, and when the preaching is over, attendees can hang around and enjoy a cold one and a smoke, no questions asked.

"We do things a little different here," said Jim "Cork" Miller, co-owner of Cork's. "We're not judgmental."

Church of the Faithful Few was started by the Rev. John Rogers, the father of an acquaintance of Miller's.

Rogers got the idea for Church of the Faithful Few after a near-fatal motorcycle accident in New Hampshire. At the time, Rogers was with the International Evangelists for Heaven's Saints, a motorcycle ministry started by former Hell's Angel Charles "Barry" Mayson.

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Council imposes ban on flavored tobacco products 

The New York City Council has banned the sale of all flavored tobacco products, including little cigars.These little cigars look just like cigarettes, but, due to a tax loophole, cost considerably less. . . .

Council Member Letitia James pointed out that in Central Brooklyn and other communities like it, these brightly packaged flavored cigars are often marketed near the candy, right where they can best capture the attention of the youth. Most councilmembersof her colleagues in the council agreed. The prohibited flavors include chocolate, vanilla, honey, candy, cocoa, dessert, alcoholic beverage, herb and spice flavors. (Menthol, mint and wintergreen flavors are excluded from the ban.)

"A significant number of constituents that I have spoken with also believe that smoking cigars is less toxic and less addictive than cigarettes," James added. "They are wrong. One cigar has as much tobacco as five cigarettes and contains more nicotine. That is why we, as adults, have to stand up and ban these products."

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On the Town: Two Omaha cigar bars ready to roll 

Sniff, sniff. Cigar smokers smell victory at hand as two new cigar bars -- Ravenite Cigar Bar & Lounge and Havana Garage -- get ready to open.

The Nebraska Liquor Control Commission recently approved rules to facilitate a new state law that exempts cigar bars from the statewide public smoking ban.

Under those rules -- which are still waiting approval from the governor and attorney general -- to become a cigar bar, businesses would have to obtain a special liquor license, install a walk-in humidor (a special room with temperature and humidity controls for storing and displaying cigars), generate at least 10 percent of their gross revenue from tobacco sales (except cigarettes), and would be prohibited from allowing cigarette smoking and selling food. (Tobacco shops also are exempt from the statewide smoking ban.)

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