Why cigars?

[Ringo]

Why not cigarettes? It's just tobacco, right? Cigarettes don't stink the place up like those foul cigars do. And they cost less. And they don't take an hour to smoke. At least that's what you hear from cigarette smokers. They cannot understand why we would spend several dollars or more for one gigantic roll of tobacco, when we can go to the 7-11 and buy a box of twenty smaller, more convenient rolls of tobacco for less money. And we don't (usually) even inhale the things.

Well, the cigarette smokers just don't get it and they never will. The cigar is an excursion; it's a little mini-vacation that you can take in the middle of the day. It may be ten degrees in Colorado, but I can take a trip down to the islands or straight to Havana. I can make a connection with a plot of black earth, with a seed and a sower, and with a human hand that carefully placed the full, unaltered tobacco leaves that make up my cigar. The whole process is a human one from the earth to the the smoker, an uninterrupted cycle that connects the smoker to the place where the cigar was born. If I am looking outside at snow falling and wishing for summer, all that I have to do is to lift the lid on my humidor and inhale the sweet fragrances of another part of the world and choose my destination - then transport myself there for an hour or two, without leaving my house. Each cigar has so much of the earth and so much of the people in it that every one has its own personality. Every one can take you to a different place, a different mood. It's no wonder that smokers sometimes spend long minutes staring into their humidors. They are trying to decide on where they want to go. Yet at other times they stride purposefully towards the humidor, knowing exactly what they are after. This time they know where they want to go.

Then there is the cigar experience in and of itself. The smoker might pay $2, $5, $10, $20, or even more for one cigar, but there really is no cost at all for a cigar. The cigars are free - the cost is for the ticket to the experience. And that ticket buys you some time alone in a busy world; one hour, two hours, perhaps more where you are alone with your thoughts, or without them; you are in your own little cocoon, enveloped by the aroma of a far off place and connected to it by the trail of humanity that leads back to the earth. People tend to leave you alone when you are with your cigar, whether because of the aroma or because they respect your time and space does not matter. It's an invisible, portable privacy fence that you can carry around with you if want to. But the cigar does not function only as a privacy fence; the cigar can also be a ticket to a fiesta; a social gathering where everybody is united by the same thing and the ultimate goal is to give somebody something even better than what they just gave you. Nobody at the party wants to leave with more than they came with. The best thing that you can possibly do is to spend your last dollar on the most expensive cigar around and give it to a stranger - rather, a new friend. And you need not worry about having spent your last dollar. Because there is no doubt that there is somebody just waiting to do the same for you. And when you find yourself newly penniless there is no need to worry - nobody at this party goes hungry, nobody goes thirsty, nobody goes without smoke.

Now for the cigarette. Far be it from me to criticize, but cigar smokers have as much in common with cigarette smokers as dogs do with cats. The cigarette is a drug, it is a fix, it is a way to satisfy an addiction that won't leave the smoker alone. Where cigars are a human experience that everybody involved with making puts their personality and often their name into, the cigarette is an impersonal, machine made thing filled with tobacco chopped into pieces so small as to lose all of its identity. The tobacco is as nameless as the stranger who cadges a cigarette from a smoker who has a full pack - the only thing that they have in common is their need to stay ahead of the cravings. You won't see them at any parties based around their common interest. There is no such thing as a cigarette herf. Where the cigar smoker knows where each piece of tobacco in the cigar comes from and uses this knowledge to make buying decisions and determine favorites, the cigarette smoker neither knows nor cares where the tobacco in the cigarette comes from, as long as it satisfies the urge. Where the cigar smoker looks longingly to the next cigar and plans the occasion for when it would be most pleasurable, the cigarette smoker does not have to plan anything; the cigarettes plan it for them and the smoker follows the schedule. When was the last time you saw a cigar smoker huddled outside in the rain, shivering and holding a newspaper over their head in one hand while they puff frantically away, trying to satisfy the urge as quickly as possible so that they can get back inside? The cigar smoker smokes for pleasure and rarely becomes truly nicotine addicted - they derive much pleasure without even having to inhale. It is not often that you will see a cigar smoker who also smokes cigarettes by habit. The cigarettes would destroy the flavor of any cigars and make the whole thing pointless. Where the cigar is an all-natural, all tobacco product, the cigarette with its machine chopped tobacco is rolled in paper and then plugged with a filter made of....made of....made of what? I do not know. Storage speaks volumes too - whereas a typical pack of cigarettes is crumpled into shirt pocket or chucked onto the dashboard of a car, cigars are lovingly stored in a place of honor, in a beautiful, hand crafted humidor that can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars and takes pride of place in whatever room it is located. And finally - the cigar is an experience. Some of the times spent smoking a cigar are times that will stay with you for life. I can recall cigars that I smoked over a decade ago and everything about the experience. I've never heard anyone waxing eloquent about a particular cigarette that they smoked yesterday, much less over a decade ago. The cigarettes all taste the same. Nobody cares what vintage crop the tobacco came from and nobody ages them. They are all uniform - and uniformity does not create memories.

None of this will ever do anything to change the present laws, and I would not expect it to, although it would be nice if the tobacco tax on cigars didn't have to be as high as the one on cigarettes. But people need to realize that the cigar smoker and the cigarette smoker are two different people, and never the twain shall meet.