Issue #37
February 28, 2005
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Commentary Cuba has banned smoking in public places, following the lead of many other countries. This is surprising from a land whose symbol is the cigar, but Fidel gave up smoking in 1986. There are fewer and fewer places where a cigar or pipe can be enjoyed in peace; certainly New York is not one of them.While many may cheer at this, the sign in a local bar window has some truth to it: “If people were clamoring for a non-smoking saloon, surely some capitalist entrepreneur would have given it to them years ago.”
Those bastions of smoking in the western world, Ireland, Cuba, even France, have all fallen. Amazingly, the nations themselves have not collapsed, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were a near thing. Tobacco growing and sales are still legal, but a lot of the output is going to the near and far east, where smoking is still endemic. China is a huge market for cigarettes, as is Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. Few restaurants in Japan have a non-smoking section. The best pipe tobacco is still grown in Turkey and Syria, and good cigarette tobacco is grown in Africa, but American tobacco farmers are mostly producing for export nowadays.
The vision of quick trip to post-Castro Cuba to revel in good music and good cigars is now a dying dream; should Castro pass on, it is unlikely that his successor will buck the international trend and reverse the non-smoking policy, however much the Cuban tobacco farmers and Havana cigar rollers might want him to. Miami is still somewhat friendly to cigar smokers, but usually in special cigar bars. Only in the East is the right to smoke untrammeled.
Kipling, that great poet of soldiers and empire, needs revision. His “Send me somewhere East of Suez / Where the best is like the worst / and there ain't no ten commandments / and a man can raise a thirst” could become “Send me somewhere East of Suez / where the Japanese make cars / where there's lots of air pollution / and a man can smoke cigars.”
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