Knowing what you’re talking about isn’t a requirement when you speak in public. Take, for example, a letter that ran in the March 17 edition of the Baltimore Sun, written by two Maryland law students, Avery Blank and Julie Siegel, who work for the Center for Tobacco Regulation.

In the letter, the two students start out by writing, “Peach, mango, and chocolate are not just some of our favorite ice cream flavors. Rather, they are the new generation of smokers’ favorite cigar flavors. Who are these smokers? More likely than not, they are kids.”

No proof is offered, no surveys, no facts, not even a report on the number of tobacco sales to minors in the state. Just a statement to be taken as true. In support of a Maryland bill to ban flavored cigars – taking the Federal ban on flavored cigarettes a step further – the letter states:

SB 973 aims to counter the growing number of minors who purchase cigars that have candy-like flavors, such as cookie dough, chocolate chip and pink lip gloss. These cigars cost as little as 80 cents, an easy purchase for a child to make with his weekly allowance. Can you imagine an adult lighting up a grape-flavored Phillies Blunt, sold in a bright purple plastic tube resembling a candy package? Adults primarily smoke premium cigars, which are exempt from this bill.

Didn’t we just read about how adult women are enjoying flavored cigars in South Africa? And, of course, Blank and Siegel are blissfully – or is it purposefully – unaware that machine-made cigars outsell premium cigars in the U.S. by nearly 6-to-1! Adults smoke machine-made cigars at the rate of more than 1.7 billion a year in the U.S., compared to about 284 million premium cigars in 2009. But you wouldn’t know it from the letter.

The truth is that these two women are now simply cogs in the anti-tobacco machine which is trying to obtain tobacco prohibition in the U.S. slowly but surely. To them, the truth is inconvenient . . . or perhaps just irrelevant.

Courtesy CigarEncyclopedia.com

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