Savor The Flavor
Posted By The Cigar Soldier on March 23, 2010
My mind started to ponder the infinite wisdom behind big government taking control over tobacco and allowing the FDA to be the headmaster of an industry so old it may be rivaled only by prostitution. One of the hot issues that the FDA plans to address is flavored tobaccos because they feel it is a gateway for youngsters into tobacco use. So, flavored cigars such as many produced by Drew Estate or CAO and almost all flavored pipe tobaccos have landed front and center on their hit list. After talking with some proponents of smoking bans in my area I asked about their stance on this specific issue. It seems the thought process is that if this type of tobacco available, minors will use these products as stepping stones to all natural tobacco products and become addicted to the evil weed. Before you know it all the youth of America will have fallen under control of big tobacco because of Middleton’s Cherry Blend. Oh the horror!
I’m trying hard to understand this mentality. First of all you need to be old enough to purchase tobacco products in the first place. Seems like the discussion should be over at this point if only the rules on the books were enforced. They’re not, so I must go on. Anti-tobacco forces want us to believe that a grape flavored Swisher will lead you down a road to uncontrolled addiction and heavy tobacco use. Really? That’s the reason you seldom see bubblegum candy cigarettes anymore, they were a gateway to the real thing. Remember the good ol’ days with candy cigarettes? I’m not saying that it was okay to promote actions that mimic smoking to young children but at least admit we’ve gone a little overboard by blaming what is perceived as a smoking problem in minors on bubblegum. I watched more 
hours of cartoons as a child than most people could amass in a lifetime yet I’ve never strapped a rocket to my back and tried to chase down the Roadrunner. I’m wondering if there are any of you guys out there that are saying to yourself, “You know, if it wasn’t for those damn bubble gum cigars, I would not be a smoker. ‘
I’m sure that if we all look back and really analyze our early child hood, the only reason we smoke pipes today is because we were inundated with those god awful bubble blowing pipes. Hell, those things laid the ground work for our future “addiction” to real pipes. If you just stand back and look at yourself you’ll realize you have no inner self control and that 
products like these not only encouraged you to take up smoking, they were the gateway to the real thing. The FDA is only doing this to help you since you have proven you can’t control yourself. Once you have taken that first step the rest of the journey is laid out for you according to the well renowned experts now in charge of tobacco.
This hogwash gets jammed down our throats as though we’re all a bunch of crackheads with a long history of smoking weed and eating Cheetos. Nothing against you guys that do shit like that. They are trying to draw a parallel between illegal drug use and legal tobacco use. Many activists claim that certain drugs such as pot will lead to other drug use. They look at it as gateway drug that soon opens the doors to other often more dangerous types of narcotics. So in turn, if they could just get rid of flavored tobaccos which they feel is targeting younger smokers, they can slowly eliminate what they feel to be the real evil end product that we all enjoy. Why the hell else is there this mad dash to deal with flavored tobacco. Again you can hear the battle cry in the background: “Anything for the children”.
With no actual medical training and actually no real study, I think I have figured out the worst gateway product of all that I can almost guarantee leads to heavy drug abuse. Now, I personally don’t buy the whole gateway drug theory since I believe man makes his own conscious decisions but I’m sure there are some people that have smoked a little weed and before you know it they have turned their life completely upside down. They did have to start somewhere. I’m going to bet that nearly 99 percent of all drug users have one thing in common: milk. Yeah that’s right my friends. Over 99 percent of all drug users have at some point in their life consumed some quantity of milk. So lets ban milk since it’s obvious that all drug users have that one common denominator in their lives that potentially caused them to become an addict, rob a 7-Eleven, steal a car, actually eat fruit cake or get married in Vegas.
Do you hear just how stupid that sounds? Almost as dumb as blaming flavored pipe tobacco and cigars for anything that has to do with encouraging somebody to take up smoking. Thanks for letting me vent.
The Cigar Soldier
About the author
Well you know our fearless leader, Barry smokes cigarettes and in his book he wrote about his usage of crack cocaine so maybe there is a link. And Clinton smoked pot, though he never inhaled that cherry got red simply because the temperature in the room changed. And he was known to enjoy a flavored cigar on occasion (note- that specific flavor can not be bought off the shelf fat intern required) So our last two Democratic Presidents were consumers of recreational drugs…..maybe the link is being a Democrat! We should conduct an experiment where we ban all Democrats and see if the drug problem corrects itself.