Cigars
Cigars are the only ultra-luxury item whose use can earn you a hateful, withering look from everyone else at the bar.
Just The Facts
- Because of their higher price, extended smoking time, and complexity of flavors, cigar smoking is generally considered more of a hobby than cigarette smoking.
- Prices for cigars can be wildly divergent, from hundreds of dollars for vintage, pre-embargo Cuban cigars, to 49 cents for a grape-flavored Swisher Sweet.
- No one has ever bought a grape-flavored Swisher Sweet because they were in it for the cigar.
A Brief History About The Cigar
The lawyers at Cracked requested we include the following statement: If you smoke cigars, you will have health issues such as cancer, gum disease, and loss of sex drive. The dangers are equal with women and men alike, and we would like people such as Lisa Guerrero to not advertise the product from now on.
The history of the cigar begins with Christopher Columbus and his band of merry men. And by merry, we mean it was a bunch of scraggly dudes who smelled like rotting meat sprayed by a skunk, living together for many months on the open seas. Women were a fading memory, replaced by a sexual desire for porpoises and their alluringly exposed blow holes. When his ships finally made landfall in October of 1492, you might say that Captain Chris needed a little pick-me-up.
"Dear Lord, please let there be a Hooters within walking distance."
The natives of the island approached the sailors with handfuls of tobacco leaves and told them, "Get off our island, fucking Eurotrash... and take this rancid weed with you." Unfortunately, all Columbus heard was, "Mumblety mumblety oompa loompa dippitty doo," and he assumed some well-tanned people were giving him a gift. Columbus stuffed the leaves in his mouth, said something along the lines of, "Whoa, dudes, I'm like Leaf Ericson," and proceeded to kill only some of the natives as a thank-you for their wonderful present.
After bagging his haul of tobacco in condoms and forcing the crew members to swallow them, he takes off for his return trip to Spain. Forgetting that a sailboat takes a long time to cross the ocean, the crew has to swallow the tobacco bags over a dozen times before finally reaching home (a technique for curing tobacco that is still used in some Eastern European countries). It didn't take long for the plant to become popular, and soon it was being distributed along trade routes. Roman Catholic missionaries distributed the seed among places like the Philippines, where the natives discovered that the new tobacco crops grew wonderfully in their soil when mixed with fertilizer made from dead Roman Catholic missionaries.
She calls that one the "Papal Staff". It tastes like Jesus.
By the late 19th century, tobacco was a hit worldwide, and cigars were the primary source in society for delivering that sweet, mouth-blackening goodness. Nobel Prize winning author Rudyard Kipling even wrote a poem about how he would choose a good smoke over his wife. Granted, he portrays her as a haranguing shrew, and most of us would choose a cigar or even the welcoming grip of death over a spouse like that, but, hey, Nobel Prize.
"...and a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a shut up woman, quit nagging me"
Cigar making became a legitimate industry, with Central America and the Caribbean region leading the way in terms of quality and production. Unfortunately, this soon led to the advent of the industrial cigar roller, which was able to create thousands of bland, cheap smokes per day. Soon, the public grew bored of the generic cigars, and demanded something even cheaper, with hundreds of additives. Enter the cigarette, and the cigar's days of ubiquitousness were over. Still, enough crusty artisans held on to the old ways to make the hand-rolled cigar a legitimate art form for connoisseurs who enjoy setting fire to their prized possessions.
The Good Old Days
Swishers are to damn expensive by me. 1.29 every time I want to roll a blunt
ReplyRudyard looks like Gregor mendel with a 'stache
ReplyOnly smoked one cigar in my life and holy f**k does that s**t taste good
Replycool article, but where's the lol?
Replyold meat and cat a*****e
Cigars smell a hell of a lot better than cigarettes. I'm partial to the pipe myself, but the odd cigar now and then can't hurt anyone. Another point; I brought a Cuban Cigar from Europe back to the States and I must say, they are good, but not legendary. It's the illegality that makes them desired.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesthe thing that MADE them desirable was the blue corojo tobacco that grew exclusively in cuba. In an effort to up profits, though, cubas cigar industry switched to a (less disease prone) corojo hybrid tobacco years ago that scrapped a lot of the flavor for more dependable crop yields.
Best Cigar I ever had I picked up off the boat in Roatan, Honduras. This old guy was sitting at a fold-up table by the gate outside the port with a pile of tobacco and wrappers. Dude rollen up 8 for $20 bucks. Best smoke all trip, epsecially paired with the Cognac tasting they held at the cigar club on ship that night. Ran across some cubans as well on that trip. Almost three times the price and it was nothing to write home about.
Did not know about that tobacco switch Ace, that's interesting.
Ace: Do you know when the companies switched to a corojo hybrid? I was under the impression Cohiba stuck with the blue corojo after other companies turned. They tend to be more into the "purety" of a cigar.
George Carlin on cigars: "Sigmund Freud once said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Oh yeah? Well sometimes it's just a big brown dick!"
ReplyThat's surprisingly amusing.
and sometimes cocaine is just cocaine! wait...
But cigars put carcinogens in your mouth like crazy. You just get gum and throat cancer instead of lung cancer. Also, you can get super buzzed off a good cigar if you do it right. The nicotine gets absorbed through the gums rather than the lungs.
ReplyThe point of cigar smoking is not to get "super buzzed." And the Surgeon General released a statement saying that someone who smokes cigars moderately, 5 or less per day, that they are only at a slightly higher health risk than someone who doesn't smoke at all. And I contend that stress can be more unhealthy than smoking a cigar once in a while and it is scientifically proven that enjoying a fine cigar lowers stress levels. And anything in excess is bad for you. I would rather take my chances with a cigar or two a day than eating fast food 3 - 5 times a week, which many people do.
I'm struggling to type this... but the bias is really off-putting. To the point where I had to personally look some stuff up when I thought some of your implications sounded like outright lies.
Reply...they were.
You had to look some stuff up to find the exaggerations in that article?
At first, I too tought it really tasted like cat a*****e, had a great reference too...
A study as recent as 2006 i think it was ( i have the pdf somewhere in my mess of files) found no greater association of cancer, emphysema or mortality ages when compared to nonsmokers in those who had one cigar a day and did not inhale frequently or deeply. Cigars are not so bad. I have smoked cigarettes and cigars. I became extremely addicted to cigarettes in a short period of time. After quitting cigarettes, i can still smoke cigars once or twice a month and not relapse. It's really quite harmless. Not all tobacco is the devil.
ReplyThis was only for cases of RESPIRATORY ailments, and did not include oral diseases. Tobacco in general is a heavy carcinogen, which is why even chewing tobacco will cause oral cancers, despite the fact that you are not inhaling smoke or the like.
As for not all tobacco being the devil, my grandfather used to say he wish he'd go out of business. His job? Thoracic surgeon. Almost every day he had a new patient with some sort of disease resulting from tobacco, whether it was cancer, respiratory inflammation, or something else. And while he managed to at least lengthen the lives of many of them, most eventually succumbed to the disease caused by their own habits. So is tobacco the devil? I say yes.
These are undoubtedly all from people who smoked two packs a day, of course they got sick. You'd be just a sick if you ate two boxes of oreos every day. Are oreos evil?
you smoke cigarettes for the nicotine but a cigar is a nice treat. I find that i have a mid ground taste not the cheapos but not the expensive ones. But serouisly after looking at that chart i can see that may be the way a non smoker sees it. Smoking a cigar is a hobby or a treat cigarette smoking is more of an addiction.
Reply"All those additives" are just ordinary things (many of which are already in the human body) used by special interest groups to scare people who do not know chemistry. Behold: To illustrate my point I give you Coca-Cola, minus the magical mystery chemicals that somehow they are allowed to get away with withholding from public knowledge:
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesH2CO3, C6H12O6, cis-13-Docosenoamide, ammonium sulfate, 1-(2-Pyridylazo)-2-naphthol, INVERTOSE BETA-AMYLASE, D(+)-Glucose 4-Chlorobenzaldehyde, Dextrin D(+)-Sucrose, D-(+)-Maltose, monohydrate alpha-Amylase, Extrusion machine MALT EXTRACT, Lactose, Molasses, Ammonium carbonate,C8H10N4O2 (xanthine alcaloid), Orthophosphoric acid (H3PO4), C7H8N4O2(Thebromine), C30H32N8O10, Citrus Aurantifolia (C6H8O7), Methyl vanillin aldehyde (4-Hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde), propane-1,2,3-triol
1,2,3-propanetriol 1,2,3-trihydroxypropane glyceritol (C3H5(OH)3), 4,4-Dimethylaminocinnamaldehyde (C11H13NO), linalool (77.48 %), -terpinene (4.64 %), -pinene (3.97 %), limonene (1.28 %), geraniol (0.64 %) and 2-decenal (0.16 %). a-pinene, camphene, b-pinene, a-terpinene, nerol, neryl acetate, farnesol, geraniol, linalool, nerolidol, linalyl acetate, methyl anthranilate and indole
And that is kind of a bottom barrel simplification of whats in there. You might notice that many of those are listed MSDS HARMFUL MUTAGENIC and that propane is listed among the ingredients. Don't be scared. In the quantities they are present they are relatively harmless. Oh, also a lot of them are in cigarettes where they become magically able to kill you in even smaller quantities.
Don't smoke because you don't like the smell or because introducing tar into your lungs reduces their ability to absorb oxygen, not because some jackass uses unverifiable science invented by the same guys who were trying to make a werewolf supersoldier by making jewish girls f**k dogs.
amen the only thing bad about cigarettes is the fact that it is smoke and the tar damages your lungs other than that it is relatively harmless
Yep. It's not good for you. It should be discouraged because a decade or two of heavy usage will reduce over all health and may possibly lead to emphazema. I don't encourage it. I just don't get why we encourage the consumption of drinks that can cause ulcers, accelerated tooth decay, diabetes and heart murmers to the point of selling it in schools but we need an entire lobby against a product because it was linked to cancer by nazis. They're still using research that is over 70 years old and done by guys who literally said "Smoking is bad for you, but we know it is hard to quit, so here: Calm your withdrawal from the devil nicotene with some good, healthy heroin!"
I have no problem with saying "Cigars are gross and people who smoke them in public are equally gross and also rude." but trying to back it with veiled health threats is underhanded.
The nazis didn't get cancer.
You sir, are the one to suck at chemistry. Propane-1,2,3-triol? 1,2,3-propanetriol? 1,2,3-trihydroxypropane glyceritol? Different forms of glycerol... you know, the stuff in cookies, liquors, or ice cream. Never had those? How about ketchup? We all know how modern society is inundated with chemical additives, but sugesting a polyol like glycerol is as dangerous as, say acetone, is idiotic. Let's see some of the additives in tobacco, shall we? Benzene, a fuel solvent associated with leukemia. Formaldehyde, embalming fluid known to cause cancer. Carbon monoxide, the stuff coming out of exhaust pipes. Arsenic, common rat poisoning. Hydrogen Cyanide, what Nazis used in their gas chambers. GrammatonNinja, name some chemicals in your list that exist naturally in any normal human body. GrammatonNinja, does lower concentration of a harmful chemical mean less danger compared to a higher concentration of a harmless chemical? GrammatonNinja, how about you give a link from a MSDS that says a chemical in your list is mutagenic? Do you know the difference between a mutagen and a carcinogen? Unverified science invented by Nazis? How about research data from Cancer Research UK, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and many other organizations that use "unverified science" to link tobacco with all the wonderful afflictions? Next time, YOU do a little research rather than cite seeming impressive chemistry to scare people.
God, the list of additives is one of the reasons I quit that shit.
ReplyTobacco is f*****g nuts man, but if you wanna do it you're gonna anyway, fine by me. Lol
This reminds me of a little blurb in one issue of The Onion:
ReplyNew "Pompous Asshole" Magazine to Compete With "Cigar Aficionado"
Honestly, if I'm going to spend that sort of money on something, just to set fire to it, it had better do something pretty cool.
what about a cigar with a hidden firework in it?
or a Cigar that gives you an awesome superpower after burning
or a Cigar that tells you the best places to eat as you are incinerating it
or a Cigar that calls forth a Maestro Symphony... of Metal!
Actually, the dangers aren't equal with women and men alike. With women, cigar smoking contributes to reaching menopause earlier and thus, in general, stronger and earlier physical effects of aging.
ReplyKipling had said and written far more controversial things than that. XD Just google "white man's burden". XD
You bastard! How could you forget Andropause! And the eternal mid-life crisis where I get me my Porsche! You careless bastard!
What the f**k is that cigar? I mean... How can someone smoke six cigars at the same time?
ReplyDoes not compute.
remember pictures from the 50's of teen girls in poodle skirts sharing a malt. exactly the same way. (although finding poodle skirts in the size of your average cigar smoker is a tall order)
They are supposed to be untangled and smoked separately. This will give you a rather curly but functional cigar. I think they were originally intended as a convenient way to carry multiple cigars, but now it's more of a curiosity.
The info graphics were pretty clever.
ReplyI always see myself as sexy as old blue eyes when I'm having a nice thick cigar.
ReplyThere are few things sexier than cigar smoke. Yes my father smokes cigars, why do you ask?
ReplyFYI: The cigar the old Filipino woman was smoking was a dried arm of another older Filipino woman.
ReplyI haven't been a clerk even half a year, but damn am I sick of hearing the words "Swisher Sweet" and "cigarillo". It also grates me when the contents of said paraphernalia are dumped on the pavement only a couple/few /feet/ from a trash can.
ReplyI've been one for almost three years now, and I feel your pain. I just love when I'm outside sweeping up all the cigarette butts people aren't bothering to put in the bins, and someone, obviously seeing what I'm doing, just tosses theirs three feet away on the sidewalk. Assholes.