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The American premium cigar market is looking surprisingly strong. Imports of handmade cigars increased by 4.2 percent in 2003, to 276 million cigars, a performance that came on the heels of five percent growth in 2002. More premium cigars were shipped to the United States than in any year since 2000, when around 290 million cigars were imported...
"The first four months of 2003 were the worst four months that I've ever seen in history," said Manuel Quesada, owner of Manufactura de Tabacos S.A. and S.A.G. Imports Inc., the maker and distributor, respectively, of Fonseca and Cubita cigars, among others. "Weather had a lot to do with it. When weather hits from Chicago to Boston and from New York to Atlanta, that's a big chunk of the market right there. Prohibition started to come in heavily in 2003, so weather and prohibition combined to make the first four months of that year really terrible. The rest of the year," said Quesada, "made up for the first four months."
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Results. Occurrence of tobacco use was observed to vary dramatically from country to country. Nonetheless, for the combined group of countries, the estimated odds of tobacco use in youths at the highest levels of behavioral problems was more than five times that for youths at the lowest levels, after controlling for sex, age, lack of participation in recreational activities, level of irritability, and levels of problems with school, family, and mental health. Country- specific analyses show that youths at the highest levels of behavioral problems have a consistently greater occurrence of tobacco use as compared to youths at the lowest levels of behavioral problems.
Conclusions. These findings are concordant with prior studies on tobacco use among adolescents with behavioral problems. Although the magnitude of observed associations varied according to the country of residence, the strength of these associations and their significance by conventional standards were observed in nearly all the countries sampled. This is the first study in these seven countries on potentially causal relationships such as these. More research is needed to augment our knowledge regarding the observed cross-country differences and ultimately to develop, implement, and evaluate effective tobacco preventive intervention programs.
In contrast to this year's disease- ridden Connecticut Shade tobacco crop, there's a bumper crop being harvested by farmers in Central America, according to Cigar Insider, an industry newsletter.
The newsletter said tobacco growers in Nicaragua and Honduras are harvesting one of their best cigar tobacco crops in years.
After a slow start, the Atlantic Basin hurricane season, which began June 1, has picked up in intensity with three hurricanes, Dennis, Floyd and Gert, developing in the past month.
Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd have passed safely to the northeast of the Caribbean cigar centers in the Dominican Republic and Cuba. . . While Hurricane Floyd is battering the Bahamas today with winds exceeding 150 miles per hour, 20-30 foot seas and heavy rain, the Bahamas isn't a significant cigar manufacturing center.
In Nicaragua, the outlook was only slightly less bleak. . . ''I am in the tobacco business, and I can safely say that almost everyone was wiped out by this,'' former minister Martinez Cuenca said.