An Economist's take on cigar consumption

[innova]

Pretty interesting read..

http://www.economist.com/daily/chart...=features_box4

-innova

[TommyBB]

Some of the few comments were even more ignorant than American anti-tobacco zealots. Wow. Economist readers, too. Yikes.

[KatDad]

Interesting!

Thanks for posting.

[Briandg]

I question his statistics. Tommy will be able to check this for me, but IIRC, the boom was collapsing right at the point that he is quoting a steady 14 year rise in smoking.

To start with, I think his trending is based on sales of cigars, not on actual smoking. After the boom was winding down and collapsed, the unloading of crap cigars would have caused HUGE bursts of sales, just as has been shown, and face it, a lot of them were probably never smoked.

The second trend I see has no solid spikes, just an occasional surge, and I feel that this is responsible to the "cigar renaissance" that occurred as the makers abandoned bulk panic manufacturing, and were willing and able to focus on quality cigars. With every new year, millions of new cigars were created that had never been seen before. The smokers that were still in existence, as opposed to the schlemiels who followed the fad, passed up no opportunity to buy new and quality, rewarding the constant innovation that churns a market.

Someone who has summaries of the RTDA conventions and the releases could probably take those trends, and create a reasonable chart of probable causes for some of those micro spikes.

To tell the truth, I feel absolutely certain that you could take a roll call here, and find that at least 100,000 to maybe even 250,000 cigars were purchased during that time that should not be counted in smoking statistics, because they are sitting in coolers and humidors all over the country. I think it is safe to say that during the boom, the number of cigars made but not smoked within a 12 month period was probably insignificant.

So, if the guy counted on retail sales instead of actual smoking stats, good grief. That entire chart isn't worth crap if he did, IMO. Too bad he didn't cite his criteria so we could trust it.

[innova]

Great response Brian, very insightful. Not sure how much of that data is available regarding the purchases, but could probably get good information if we knew if the purchases were boxes or singles.

-innova

[tonycsmoke]

My guess is that the trend also includes mass produced cigars. The cigar boom was for premium cigars (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). Probably the small drops and raises were in the premium market. The general uptick is probably from people such as me that quit cigarettes and moved onto cigars.

[Briandg]

You have a good point, tony, in that it may also involve such oddities as the strawberry banana White Owl Blunt.

If that is the case, it doubly proves my entire point, as he is talking about cigars being related to prosperity, and for god's sake, I can't imagine anything that says prosperity any more poorly than a Tampa Nugget Tangleberry Wine Sweet and a bottle of thunderbird..

All I can think is that it is a typical economist sound bite. Only as accurate as he wants you to think it is, probably pointless, and lacking in both substance and relevance to anything important.

[tonycsmoke]

The economist point is accurate. There is a drop off at points of economic crisis. That shouldn't be that hard of a conclusion to draw. If someone loses their job, food and shelter become more of a concern than a luxury item as a cigar.

I was more interested in the long term observations. Cigar consumption (purchasing) is higher now than it was during the boom. Of course the boom was the boom because it happened in a short amount of time. The current cigar consumption picked up gradually.

[TommyBB]

It was "The Boom" because all the beautiful people were doing it out in public and making sure people knew it. It's NOT a boom when only us "proles" are doing it.

Guys, remember it's not AN economist, it's The Economist, which, along with The Financial Times are the UK's premier news/business publications. The Economist is normally MUCH more thorough and accurate than what this seems to present. They're usually quite even handed in their coverage making certain to discuss all sides of issues rigorously.

[Briandg]

I'm not buying it. He started out saying that the article was about Americans smoking, and the relationship between smoking and national mood. he started with the great depression, and a downward curve that kept on until relief came with the new deal. There was a two year drop because of engagement with japan, followed a bumpy, but nonetheless, level 20 years. We have the 1963 assassination of Kennedy, and after the most traumatic event in recent American history, it didn't drop for another year? The 1980s were booming economic times, people were making money hand over fist, stocks were exploding, prosperity was everywhere, but cigars were tanking. (Dow started the 80s below 750, by 95 it was around 8000, and still roaring upward. All through that time, with prosperity exploding, cigars were on an unbroken 30 year slide. (no upticks).

then it began an unbroken(no visible downturns) climb that he related to the .com bubble of prosperity, that ended only in 2008, with the beginning of the credit crunch.

This thing is basing some odd conclusions on some really strange data comparisons, and it isn't giving any definition of what yardsticks it used. Sales? retail or wholesale? Personal survey? legal or black market? It just gives an average number smoked by American males.

The thing that bothers me the most is that the article takes a 90 year period of an activity, and by cherry picking a few coinciding events, relates that complex and volatile history of cigar smoking to a strangely undefined concept that I can only call "national satisfaction."

My thoughts are that it still is just filler, and valueless. What did we learn from it, other than these few events had positve or negative influences on an activity that has a history of what looks like pretty much 4 steady long term states over most of this century?
1920-1935= long term, straight, steep drop.

1935-1960= long term bumpy, steady state. began and ended at practically the same point, over 25 or so years.

1965-1995=unbroken slide.

1996-2008=unbroken climb.

If nothing else, if we accept his premise and his data, we have to conclude that the period from 1965 to 1995 was one long, depressing, unprosperous, and uninspiring period in which nobody was ever happy enough to have a cigar.

Then, the booming period of insane spending that characterized the period of 1996 until the crash, how does that fit in with what we just figured out about the previous period?