On Alert: The Cigar Business is Coming to Your City
Smokefree successes through the years have backed the tobacco business right into a nook, and the cigar business is popping out to redefine itself and particularly align itself with tradition – each tradition.
Make no mistake – All of us match the cigar business’s goal demographic which is evidenced by the current efforts to introduce cigar bar exemptions in demographically-different cities and states all through the nation. City cities and rural states confronted challenges to smokefree protections from the cigar business. In an period the place cigarettes have change into broadly unpopular, the cigar business is working to be embraced as a social and cultural norm – from cowboys to nation golf equipment, from barber retailers to brunches. Proposed coverage exemptions and rollbacks are the most recent try and renormalize smoking and the business is hoping that we’re unprepared to defend smokefree protections in opposition to cigar threats.
Montana Holds the Line In opposition to Large Tobacco
In a hard-fought legislative session, advocates for tobacco management in Montana efficiently blocked greater than a dozen dangerous payments aimed toward weakening public well being protections. These included makes an attempt to defund tobacco prevention efforts and weaken Montana’s robust Clear Indoor Air Act (CIAA).
One of the alarming payments that may have created an exemption within the extremely well-liked CIAA to permit cigar bars to function indoors got here dangerously near passing, reaching its closing vote earlier than being narrowly defeated on third studying. If handed, cigar bars might have opened in communities throughout Montana, creating smoke-filled, unhealthy worksites and exposing employees in these new venues to poisonous secondhand cigar smoke on the job.
C.B. Pearson of Montana Youngsters vs Large Tobacco summed up this legislative win saying:
“The defeat of the cigar business’s try and weaken Montana’s 20-year-old Clear Indoor Air Act is a transparent win for public well being and the rights of all to breathe clear air. Montanans overwhelmingly help smokefree indoor areas, and nobody needs to see that progress undone to learn a choose few cigar people who smoke and the cigar business. We should stay vigilant and push again in opposition to any business effort to carve out exemptions that put our communities in danger.”
Including a cigar bar exemption is a long-standing tobacco business tactic aimed toward undermining robust and efficient native and statewide smokefree legal guidelines; legal guidelines which have protected public well being in Montana for greater than twenty years. Whereas it’s doubtless the business will attempt for a cigar bar exemption once more subsequent session in 2026, for now, Montana advocates are celebrating this 12 months’s defeat alongside key wins, together with the passage of laws that updates the Montana CIAA to incorporate e-cigarettes and vape merchandise in smokefree protections.
Cigar Bar Exemptions Ought to Not Grow to be the New Regular
Professional-cigar stakeholders are leveraging even the smallest of wins to construct momentum for the social acceptability of cigar lounges. Each rollback or exemption – irrespective of how small – is a win for the business and reestablishes the brand new regular. Rationale for embracing these new smoking lounges embrace help for financial improvement, supporting minority-owned enterprise, or defending people who smoke’ rights. There’s by no means a superb time or purpose for supporting compromises to public well being and security. Montana’s failed cigar bar exemption invoice is an instance of the aggressive push in lots of states by the cigar business to allow indoor smoking in a variety of venues that embrace not simply cigar bars, but additionally airports, bars, music venues, casinos, and different workplaces and public locations. The current rollback in Louisville, KY and the continued wrestle to maintain cigar lounges out of the Detroit airport display the urgency for safeguarding smokefree environments and sharing classes discovered with the sphere.
Smoke is Smoke
Aggressive advertising efforts work to create a cigar-smoking tradition too unique to be challenged or too insignificant to be involved about. Smoke is smoke, and defending smokefree environments requires pushing again and difficult misinformation. The business banks on the notion that “premium” cigars are one way or the other much less dangerous than cigarettes, however that’s inaccurate. A single full-size cigar can comprise as a lot nicotine as a whole pack of cigarettes, and secondhand cigar smoke is simply as poisonous. It accommodates the identical dangerous chemical substances as cigarette smoke and contributes to lung most cancers, coronary heart illness, and different critical well being dangers. Even when a cigar smoker doesn’t inhale, nicotine and different toxins can nonetheless be absorbed by means of the liner of the mouth, posing risks to each people who smoke and people round them.
We anticipate seeing extra makes an attempt to undermine smokefree indoor air legal guidelines. Tell us in the event you’re seeing cigar bar or lounge proposals in your group. Together we are able to shield and increase smokefree protections.
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About ANRF, sister group to ANR, American Nonsmokers’ Rights Basis (ANRF) is a 501c3 non-profit instructional and advocacy group that has been working for practically 50 years to guard everybody’s proper to breathe unhazardous air in workplaces and public locations, from workplaces and airplanes to eating places, bars, and casinos. ANRF has constantly shined a lightweight on the tobacco business’s interference with sound and life-saving public well being measures and efficiently protected 61% of the inhabitants with native or statewide smokefree office, restaurant, and bar legal guidelines. ANRF goals to shut gaps in smokefree protections for employees in all workplaces, together with bars, music venues, casinos, and accommodations. For extra info, please go to ANRF tasks embrace https://smokefreecasinos.org/ and https://smokefreemusiccities.org/.
Individuals for Nonsmokers’ Rights (ANR) is a member-supported,501c4, non-profit advocacy group that has been working for over 45 years, since 1976, to guard everybody’s proper to breathe unhazardous air in workplaces and public locations, from workplaces and airplanes to eating places, bars, and casinos. ANR has constantly shined a lightweight on the tobacco business’s interference with sound and life-saving public well being measures and efficiently protected 61% of the inhabitants with native or statewide smokefree office, restaurant, and bar legal guidelines. ANR goals to shut gaps in smokefree protections for employees in all workplaces, together with bars, music venues, casinos, and accommodations. nonsmokersrights.org
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