Cigar Aficionado

The latest attack on cigars is dramatic and outlandish—but it can’t be ignored. On February 14, a California State Assembly member introduced a bill that aims to eventually make tobacco sales illegal for all Californians. It’s a phased tobacco ban that would prohibit the sale of all tobacco products, including cigars, to anyone born on or after January 1, 2007. It’s a generational attack, a forever attack, that would mean that anyone born after that date would never be old enough to buy cigars in that state.

The bill was introduced by newly elected Democrat Damon Connolly, an attorney who represents California’s 12th district. The intent is clear: tobacco prohibition. Cigars, cigarettes and other products made from tobacco would become illegal substances, something future generations of Californians would never be legally old enough to buy in their state.

Your first instinct might be to say “this could never happen” or “it can never happen here.” While it does sound far-fetched, let us remind you that when this magazine was founded in 1992, the idea of smoking bans seemed unlikely. Thirty years ago, smoking was allowed in most restaurants and bars around the United States. When you checked in for a table, you would be asked “smoking or non-smoking,” and ashtrays were as much a fixture at bars as beer taps. For the most part, when smoking was prohibited it was usually the owner of the establishment making that decision. California was smoker friendly. We even threw Big Smokes in the state in the early 1990s, with events in both San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Smoking bans didn’t originate in California, but the state was a pioneer in making smoking bans comprehensive. When the state banned smoking in all enclosed workplaces—including restaurants—in 1995, it garnered attention. California bars went smoke free in 1998. Other cities and states soon followed the California example, and once-smoky cities—Chicago, Dallas, New York—began looking more and more like restrictive California. The ashtrays went away, the cigars were snuffed, until smoking indoors became the anomaly, not the norm. Ask for the smoking section in just about any restaurant and the host will think you’re from another planet.

Of course, it’s a big leap to go from an indoor smoking ban to a ban on the sale of tobacco. But there is precedent. While such a draconian law has never been passed in the United States, an identical law already exists in New Zealand. Anyone in New Zealand born in or after 2009 will never be able to buy a tobacco product in their lifetimes—or at least not without the law being changed. But New Zealand is a country of only about five million people, while California is many times larger, with around 38 million residents. It’s the most populous of the United States and a major market for cigars.

It’s time to be diligent and time to stand up for our rights. Cigars are a legal product meant to be enjoyed by adults. But we cannot assume that we will have those rights forever. When politicians try to take those rights away, we must voice our opposition or one day we will look back, shake our heads and wonder how our world turned upside down.