Why everyone should rally to the defence of cigar smokers under attack by 'bully state' – Brian Monteith
Brian Monteith despairs over plans to force cigars to be sold in plain packaging, and warns alcohol will be next
Growing up in the Sixties as the son of two smokers, I was determined as an adolescent not to smoke cigarettes like my parents. I didn’t care for the smell, but the aroma of cigars was a different matter altogether.
First my mum stopped smoking during pregnancy carrying my sister and never restarted again. She’s now 95. My father soon followed, but on a Saturday night after returning from the pub, he and his pals would get the playing cards out and drink a few whiskies with a cigar.
I was entranced by the cigars, which neither men inhaled, merely contemplating the taste while working out which cards to play. Once I was at university, I soon had occasional dinners to attend and I found a cigar at the end of a meal an enjoyable pastime.
Dreadful Soviet cigars, Cuban craftsmanship
Nothing particularly fancy, like a handmade Cuban cigar, but more the machine-made entry-level variety such as a Henry Winterman’s half corona, then graduating to a King Edward Imperial and keeping a tin of Café Cremes for a wee quickie at breakfast or early evening.
At no point did I think, “wow, look at that packaging, I must have those smokes”, or “that clear cellophane is stunningly attractive and the portrait of an old monarch makes that cigar irresistible”.
Nope; the colourful packaging of browns and red, or yellow, white and gold was of little concern. All that was obvious was the more beautiful the packaging might be, from the aluminium tubes to the flowery boxes, then the more expensive they were likely to be too. In time, at special occasions and as I had more disposable income, I started to gravitate towards hand-made Cuban or Honduran cigars.
I once tried a Russian-made cigar in Soviet-era Moscow and it was dreadful, which confirmed that it wasn’t communism that made the cigar special but the historic craftsmanship and traditional skills that pre-dated the arrival of Castro and his revolutionary mobsters.
In the process of trying different cigar types and brands, I discovered the finest cigars were used as diplomatic gifts by the Cuban communists, who had nationalised all the tobacco plantations and factories, and this had led to the Cohiba brand’s exclusivity and importance. It was not the packaging, classy though it was, that made those particular cigars sought after, but their superior quality.
I’ve since visited Cuba twice, including attending the 50th anniversary gala for Cohiba cigars, and seen all types made, but no ladies thighs were involved in the rolling!
Nanny state becomes a bully
In the early 90s, I became a Scottish spokesman for Forest, the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, not because I smoked cigarettes, I still didn’t, but because I believed smokers of cigarettes, cigars and pipes should be left alone to enjoy their social or solitary pleasure.
Restrictions on where it was possible to smoke were growing and I could see the nanny state was departing from remonstrating with grown adults through educating and informing them of the risks from all types of smoking, to becoming a bully state, restricting and punishing those who wanted to enjoy the pleasure of tobacco.
The various smoking bans and their slow but inevitable extension into even the act of smoking privately in a jail cell or at a bus stop is now proceeding with a growing age limit where, from 2027, smoking is illegal for anyone born after January 1, 2009. In just over a dozen years, someone of 30 will be able to smoke but a partner or sibling of 29 will be banned.
It is a nonsense and I do not believe it will hold, but younger generations will have to suffer it until a new government sees sense and repeals the act – started by the faux-Conservatives and confirmed by Labour.
Not content with that, the UK government is currently consulting on many new bans and restrictions, including the introduction of plain packaging of cigars. Beautiful cigar boxes, tubes and even the bands around individual cigars will be replaced by plain colouring resembling cow dung with small type for the name, without brand identities or logos. Any valuable stock held will have to be repackaged to the cost of the shop.
A small minority in need of support
Politicians fail to see that the consumption of illegal drugs has grown massively around the world and yet it comes in plain packaging. Smothering cigars in the same will not stop the smoking or affect cancer statistics. Cigar manufacturers will withdraw whole ranges of cigars or simply leave the British market altogether.
Sadly, if a long-established family businesses are forced to close through mounting costs and loss of sales, we shall undoubtedly mourn them but then simply make alternative arrangements to obtain our cigars, probably from overseas.
It is especially pointless because regular cigar smokers will continue to smoke no matter what the politicians do. And we shall not die out, as cigar smoking will continue for new generations on holidays abroad, possibly even visiting a second home that used to be in Edinburgh but has been taxed out of the city and is now somewhere exotic but affordable.
There are reckoned to be less than 750,000 cigar smokers in the UK and, being a small minority, others will not complain or seek to defend them. But it will not stop with cigars and their paraphernalia, plain packaging will ultimately come for alcohol and its branding. It is only a matter of time unless those that will be persecuted and bullied join together and defend each other, even if not consumers of what faces a ban.
It will be a drab colourless world, and I’ll be glad to not see it.
Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.