It's been well over a month--goodness, how time flies--since I resumed smoking a pipe after
a years-long hiatus. To my very great surprise, my opinions are being met with rather more
gravity than I expected. Not that I object; I'm happy to share what I know. But at the
outset of this interminably long post, on which I've been working for several weeks, let me
state up front: what I'm sharing here is the fruit of my experiences, which should
by no
means be taken as exhaustive. By all means, if you're contemplating taking up the
pipe, or are new to it, regard what I have to say here merely as a point of embarkation!
Also, I acknowledge that it
is a long post. In blogospheric terms, it is a long
train wreck. You may not want to read all of it, but before you leave, I suggest that you
at least scroll through and look at the section headings so that you don't miss anything
you might be interested in, okay?
Two Things I Have
Long Believed about People and Tobacco
1) Some people--a
lot of people, really--are
way past reasoning with on this
subject. Kind of like a couple of friends we once went out to eat with, fellow Baptists.
Now, at the time, I was abiding by that church's covenant, which stated (in retrospect, I
would say, "totally inappropriately") that no member would drink alcoholic beverages.
At dinner, I ordered an O'Doul's, which, if you didn't know, is a non-alcoholic beer. If
you want to be picky, you can say that it contains .5 (point-five, if you're having trouble
seeing the decimal point) percent alcohol, but, hey, in the real world--that's non-
alcoholic. I seriously doubt that you could get
tipsy, let alone
drunk, on
the stuff. Just not physically possible, you know?
But I got a
look. So I said, figuring they might not know, "It's non-alcoholic!"
And I
still got a look.
I am pretty sure that if my water glass had been waved in front of a beer keg, they'd have
been wondering about my water.
And so it is with tobacco. Yes, of course, we know of lives--plenty of them--that've been
wrecked with tobacco. Shoot, I deal with them every day--part of the job of someone in the
medical equipment industry.
And yet I can't help but think that some people go completely overboard when it comes to
their disdain for the stuff. These people act as though if you have a cigar every Sunday
after church and Sunday dinner, you'll be stricken with cancer, COPD, and stinky breath by
Monday morning. And God
forbid they should catch a whiff of smoke whilst outdoors.
You'd think they'd ingested plutonium.
I recall talking to a church member, an older lady, about the subject shortly after I had
given up my pipes and tobacco. I mentioned that I could always look forward to smoking a
pipe in Heaven. She said, "There won't be any smoking in Heaven!" More puzzled than I
should have been, I asked, "Why not? After all, there's no way it could possibly hurt
you." She didn't have an answer, of course. Just gave me that look that says, "You're
totally insane." No answer. No reason. No
thinking about it all. Just a
look.
To my mind, that little episode is illustrative. So many non-smokers act totally deranged
when the subject is tobacco.
They don't smoke;
they don't see how anybody
could possibly
like to smoke. And they are totally, completely, impervious to
reason on the subject.
2) People have a consistent habit of straining at gnats and swallowing camels. People will
act as though you're about to cough up a lung and die on the spot when they find out you
have a few pipefuls a week, as I've already mentioned. That this is delusional will never
occur to them, as they've been "educated" on the subject by the government, which, by the
way, also taught them that the way to avoid heart disease is to eat stuff that any idiot
knows is what you feed to cattle to
fatten them up.
But most amazingly to me, the
same people will routinely take risks that I, at least, consider insane.
You tell
me that you can go through most of your life fifty, sixty, seventy, a
hundred
pounds overweight, rarely (if ever) getting any exercise, eating garbage, and not run a
very substantial risk of negative health consequences.
You won't tell me that?
But that is what people routinely
do in this country.
And
the same people doing
that will act as though
I'm one running the health risk--
me, the guy
that's 10 pounds too heavy (admittedly--we're doing full disclosure here), but runs six to
nine miles a week, does calisthenics three days a week, and does karate, eats very little
in the way of crap, but--
horrors!--has taken up a few pipefuls a week! Shoot, I
don't mean to pick on them, they were (and presumably still are) nice people, but the
church people I mentioned earlier are perfect examples. Big as a house, both of 'em. I'm
dead certain that last time I saw her, the lady was at least double her natural weight, and
the man was probably 40 percent overweight, and maybe more. They showed not the slightest
concern for the health consequences of their diet and exercise habits or their obesity,
but, if the subject of smoking came up, could make it clear that they thought I was taking
unnecessary risks.
Is that concern with my health? Or is it a thinly-veiled attempt at moral one-upmanship,
or a vain attempt to reassure themselves about their own health habits?
When you find that people act as though a little water vapor threatens their health, you
know that you have left the realm of the rational and entered the world of the zealot. I
heard
Rush Limbaugh talk once about how he'd been
in a restaurant with some friends, and pulled out an electronic cigarette. Now, if you
don't know, these things basically put out a smoke-flavored water vapor. It is quite
odorless, quite harmless, and only the user perceives the taste.
But they
look like a cigarette, especially from a distance, and sure enough, soon
the manager came 'round to Limbaugh's table, asking him politely to put out his cigarette,
as other guests were complaining about his "smoking." Limbaugh protested that he
wasn't smoking, showed him the e-cig, how it worked, how the tip lit up when you
drew on it, and the manager was satisfied: Limbaugh wasn't smoking.
But that wasn't enough for the complainers. Eventually, the manager came 'round
again and asked Limbaugh to please put it away,
that just the sight of Limbaugh
doing something that looked like smoking was bothering them.
People like that will read this post and conclude--wait, I correct myself: they will likely
not read all of this post, though they will feel perfectly free to criticize the
contents--that it is nothing more than a long attempt to convince myself that an
inexcusably bad habit--or even
sin--is perfectly okay.
Well, they can think that if they want to. It is still a relatively free country, at least
at the time I'm writing. I am under no illusions that I am going to change the thinking of
such people. But for those who remain, I'll just tell you that my purposes in writing are
to give an account to those who knew me when I gave up tobacco and to offer some--
hopefully!--useful thoughts on spirituality and the art of pipe smoking. I don't really
want to have to come back to the subject in any detail again--I have other fishies to
fry--and so I determined at the outset that I would put pretty much all I had to say on the
subject in this one post, and to refer people back to it, if ever they wanted to know what
I think. It has taken me weeks of gathered bits and pieces of time.
I am not going to try to instruct people on the art of pipe smoking. I did think about it
a little when I set out to write, but there are perfectly good books on the subject,
excellent websites, and, since I started writing, I have found a seemingly endless number
of videos on YouTube on the subject. Anyone who wants to know the details of how to smoke
a pipe will have no trouble finding them.
Instead, I have focused on my personal experience of the subject, throwing in enough
information to make sense of some of my thoughts and comments. I hope you find the reading
worthwhile.
How I Came to Start Pipe Smoking, Quit,
and Start Again
I recently took up pipe smoking, or, as Tolkien consistently styled it,
the art of
smoking, again. I am really not sure how long it was between the time I left the art and
my return, but I think it may have been about 11 years.
Why quit, and why start again? Well, that is a story, one that I am certain most people
will find dreadfully boring. But as, in the course of telling it, I am going to touch on
Christianity, salvation, works, eating meat, drinking wine, idols, prayer, and some
practical observations on the art, there might be a few folks, googling 'round the web,
who might stumble upon this and find it helpful. It is for those people I write.
I started smoking a pipe when I was 14 or 15, with my parents' full knowledge. Both
cigarette smokers at the time, I suppose they were just grateful I wasn't smoking
cigarettes or dope behind their backs. I had read most of
the Sherlockian corpus by that time, and Holmes made pipe smoking
sound
de rigeur for the would-be intellectual. About the same time, I read
The Hobbit and
The Lord of the
Rings, and you know how much
they celebrate pipe smoking. I had also met a few
pipe smokers--including one gent in his mid-70s (as I recall) who was still working and
still tough as an old hob-nail boot. And I knew--well, my grandmother had told me more
than once--that my great-grandmother had smoked a pipe all her life, living to quite an
advanced age (I am wanting to say that my grandmother told me 102). My grandmother joked
once that she would probably have lived to 110, had it not been for her insistence on
smoking that pipe!
The school where I went at the time had a copy of some government publication or other, one
of the Surgeon General's reports or updates. I remember looking at mortality rates and
some things stuck firmly in my mind, things I remember reading to this day, 35-36 years
later.
One was that there actually was a level of cigarette smoking at which there was no
discernible difference in mortality between cigarette smokers and non-smokers. It was two
cigarettes a day. For cigars, it was 3 or fewer cigars a day. For pipes, it was five or
fewer pipes a day. And interestingly, it appeared that in a huge swath of the country,
roughly between the Mississippi and the Rockies, pipe smokers who smoked five or fewer
pipefuls a day actually had
lower mortality than non-smokers.
I was not then as aware as I now am of how misleading oversimplified statistics can be, but
it was obvious to me that things weren't as simple as "tobacco causes cancer, therefore you
shouldn't use it." Couldn't be, on the face of it. Apparently, quantity and method were
important. And I knew that I didn't want to smoke even five pipefuls a day. I couldn't
imagine why anyone would want to do that. I still can't. Depending on the size of the
pipe bowl, the kind of tobacco, and the individuality of the smoker, a pipe can take
anywhere from about 45-90 minutes to finish. Why on earth would anyone want to smoke five
or six hours a day, every day?
I am sure you would like to know which of the Surgeon General's reports or updates I am
referring to. I wish I knew. They are all available online, in PDF form, and I have, since
starting this post, perused some of them, but apparently not the one I remember. I have
looked at several, found the same information, more or less, in individual mortality tables
scattered hither and yon throughout those reports and am satisfied that my memory isn't
playing me false. For instance, one table showed very clearly that for smokers of five or
fewer pipefuls a day, mortality was .73--point-seven-three, that is--whereas non-smokers
were 1.0.
I'm sure you remember the Surgeon General playing that statistic up in the media. Right?
At any rate, aggravatingly, I have not been able to easily reproduce any of those tables.
They were in PDF form, and as
despite having cable internet, I don't have very much
internet time at home, I had to look at them at work. I couldn't get the wretched
things to print to save my life, and I was
most unwilling to sit there and try to
painstakingly reproduce several tables for the sake of this post. I will, however,
summarize: despite the scare-mongering, in report after report, you find that basically,
moderate pipe smokers simply do not run risks worth worrying about.
Read that statement carefully. I most emphatically did not say that there were
no
risks to moderate pipe smoking. I said that there were not risks
worth worrying
about. If you're having a hard time dealing with that concept, rest assured that I
shall return to it in another section of this post and flesh it out in more detail.
But
back to my history...
I soon settled into a pattern of smoking 2 or 3 pipefuls a week during the cool weather and
hardly any at all during warm weather. I followed that pattern for years and I defy
anyone, even now, to tell me with a straight face that there is any
meaningful level
of risk associated with that sort of usage.
Over the years, I tried the occasional cigar, and I generally liked them, but not enough to
switch to them, and, occasionally, cigarettes, which, with the exception of some Turkish
cigarettes, I disliked, as I was unwilling to inhale (you did know that most pipe and cigar
sokers don't inhale, right?) and the things were otherwise pretty much devoid of flavor. I
also acquired, by my mid-thirties, thirteen or fourteen pipes of various sorts. Curiously
(I will explain this shortly), not one of those pipes, even the one or two I'd owned for 10
years or more, was ever properly broken in! I had three or four books on the subject and
thought I knew what I was talking about--and in some ways, I suppose I did.
This went on pretty much without incident or change for years. Warm weather would arrive
and I would pretty much forget about the pipe, and I'd end up letting my tobacco dry out.
The autumn chill would arrive, I'd buy some fresh tobacco, and resume smoking two or three
times a week.
I tried a number of different blends, of course. Starting with "Killarney," which is what
Ted's Pipe Shop usually sells to people new to pipe smoking, and
Lane
Limited's 1Q, which was sold at "House of Tobacco" under the name "Wildcat" and in
Stillwater as "Cowboy Supreme." Most of what I tried was what my local tobacconist carried
in bulk. I gradually gravitated toward the English styles, which have little or nothing in
the way of added flavorings, like cherry, whisky, wine, etc.
And then, after probably 22 or so years of this pattern, I got online. I quickly
discovered UseNet and a pipe smoker's newsgroup. I was fascinated. For one thing, as you
might imagine, people that have pipe smoking in common might have other interests in
common, and I quickly found like-minded souls. For another, I quickly found, via the forum
and E-Bay, access to information about things that had previously been unknown to me. Some
of the people in the forum, like
Greg Pease, made
their living in the business. And everyone had an opinion and gave you things to wonder
about. Did oil-cured briar really smoke better than air-cured briar? What about the salt
treatment? What about Dunhill vs. Peterson vs. Savinelli--vs. a corn-cob? Was
Paul Bonacquisti making the
best pipes on the planet? Or
Trevor
Talbert?
I spent more and more time online with that group. I debated everything and learned a lot.
I bought different blends online, blends that my local shops didn't have (or had at
outrageous prices). I bought used pipes on E-Bay, and a new one from Mr. Bonacquisti. I
got to where I was smoking a bowl-and-a-half a day (1/2 a bowl on my lunch break and a bowl
at night), which, as anyone familiar with the subject knows, is still not smoking very much
at all.
I got much better at packing a pipe and began to understand what a difference a well-
broken-in pipe makes. I began to zero in on the sorts of tobaccos I
really liked--
virginia flakes with or without a little perique, especially
Escudo, blends with ample quantities of Turkish tobaccos, like
Cairo and
Star of the East. I knew which
pipes I kind of liked and which ones I
really liked (if you want to know: the
aforementioned Bonacquisti, and three
Petersons--a
bent bulldog, a
Rhodesian, and a
"System" pipe). My smokes weren't
getting any more frequent, but they were getting better and more satisfying.
I was going through what I have since come to recognize as a pattern of behavior I go
through. I get interested in a subject, devour enormous amounts of material on it, think,
experiment, and eventually satisfy myself that I know what I need to know, at which point
the subject assumes its proper space in my life.
Sometimes it takes a while, sometimes not. I got interested in wine, for example, in the
spring of 2011, but knew that I would never be likely to afford expensive wine, would
likely never learn to appreciate, therefore, the subtleties said to lurk therein, and so
was satisfied with the knowledge obtained from four or five books on the subject, enough to
inform me about what I
was likely to be able to afford and drink.
As regards pipes and tobacco, had I but known myself better, I would have recognized that I
was nearing the end of my intensive information-gathering phase and about to enter the
proper-space-in-my-life phase. But I didn't, and right about then, I got saved.
Now, I
thought I had been saved when I was fourteen or so (ironically, about the
same time I initially took up the pipe), when I read one of Hal Lindsey's books, was
convinced of the Bible's veracity, and prayed the "sinner's prayer" he had printed in
there. And over the years, I'd read a number of Christian books. From the time my oldest
son was about two, I'd been active in church. I'd read the Bible twice.
But there were signs that not all was well. I rarely prayed. I routinely indulged in sins
and glossed over them by saying a quick prayer, but never made any real effort to stop.
While I'd read the Bible, I'd pretty much had to horsewhip myself through it.
By the time a thoroughly Arminian revivalist, very adept at emotional manipulation, came
through, I was ripe for the picking despite what I later found to be his errors. By the
third day of preaching, I realized that while I had an
intellectual understanding of
sin and the Gospel, I'd never really been
broken over my sin. I didn't see it in
its loathsome fullness, didn't hate it the way I should. I didn't really have any desire
to stop. I basically wanted the intellectual satisfaction of being right, of being on the
winning team, and to escape Hell (not that wanting to escape Hell is a bad thing).
I was ready to beg Jesus to save me, and I did. And because a point the revivalist had
emphasized was not to hold anything back from the lordship of Christ, I told Him that I
didn't want to hold anything back. And I asked Him to give me power, power to live the
Christian life.
I was scheduled to be baptized the following night.
The next day, even though I had prayed to receive Christ the day before, I was oppressed
with a feeling that I needed to give up my pipes. Now (though I'm sure many have
already quit reading this post through boredom), in my opinion, it is critical to
understand my state of mind. I had made up my mind not to hold anything back the night
before, and even though I
knew from my reading--remember, I'd read the Bible
twice--that there is nothing sinful
per se about smoking, if Jesus asked me to give
it up, I was going to do it. And as I continued to be oppressed with that feeling, I told
a co-worker that I felt myself in the position of the rich young ruler, and that I was
being asked to demonstrate my salvation--
NOT EARN IT, but
SHOW IT--and that
if I didn't, it would demonstrate that I hadn't really meant my prayer! And then my mind
would shift the other way and I'd think that if I
did get rid of my pipes, it would
mean that I was trusting in the good work of getting rid of the pipes rather than in
Christ.
Anyone who's read John Bunyan's
Grace Abounding will
recognize what I was going through immediately.
Why, I wondered, would God be asking me to give up the pipe, when I knew that smoking
wasn't a sin? At length, I decided that my interest in the pipe had risen to the level of
idolatry. And it was absolutely true that over the preceding eighteen months or so I'd
spent too much time and money on the subject and that I'd sometimes been inconsiderate of
others.
Had I been able to take counsel with someone who would ask penetrating
questions...
How do you know that you're hearing from God?
Ummmm--I've got this really strong feeling...
And where in the Bible does it say that you should take really strong feelings to be
instructions from God?
Ummmm...nowhere...
...the whole thing would have been exploded, put in proper
perspective, immediately. But no one was asking questions like that. For the most part, to
this day, very few Christians with whom I am personally acquainted
do. It's like,
as a group, we've lost the capability.
At any rate, when I got to church that night, I threw all my pipes and tobaccos in the
dumpster, including one that I regret to this day, a Peterson bent bulldog that had been a
gift from my parents.
I did not seriously consider taking up the pipe again for years--not until very recently,
as a matter of fact. This was in spite of the fact that I still was not convinced that
smoking
per se was sinful or evil or even really unhealthful in moderation, and in
spite of doubts that came into my mind as to whether I'd really been hearing from God or
whether the feeling I'd had was the result of my overwrought emotional state, of my wanting
to be able to demonstrate to myself that I wanted to obey God. It was in spite of the fact
that eventually, my new habits of Bible study--you see, I
did experience some
changes in behavior, one of which was that I no longer had to horsewhip myself into Bible
reading, and I prayed all the time (still do), eventually made me fully aware that
Scripture is
sufficient, that everything the Christian needs to know for life and
Godliness is contained therein, and that it is very foolish indeed to make decisions based
on, say, "having a peace about something."
Or on an oppressed feeling? I didn't allow myself to get to that point for a while.
I think there were multiple things going on in my head. One was that I didn't want to
admit to myself that I'd made an emotional mistake. I have, after all, like Holmes, long
preferred to think of myself as an emotionally unbiased engine of pure ratiocination
(however unrealistic an assessment this might be). One was that I cited my willingness to
throw away the pipes as evidence of the desire to obey God wrought by His salvation--
sometimes, when I'd failed spectacularly in one way or another, it became the
primary evidence to
me and I didn't want to give it up, even though it made
no logical sense whatever, and even though I was fully aware that if I'd asked someone else
if he saw the fruits of salvation in his life and if he'd given the same answers I would
give, I wouldn't have doubted his trust in Christ, just (maybe) his maturity. And lastly,
there was a bit of fear that if I took up the pipe again, I'd go right back to where I was,
spending way too much time and money on the subject, that I wouldn't have self-control
(Right now, some of you are thinking, "This post is proof that you were right! Look!"
Listen, I have cobbled this post together with bits and pieces of time over a period of
weeks, okay? It's intended to say pretty much all I have to say on the subject, to
be something to which I can point curious people for years to come.).
Every so often, I would almost kick myself, I felt so stupid. I asked, and
kept
asking, God to give me a sign if ever it were okay for me to smoke pipes again, even though
I
knew that
Scripture is sufficient.
And then one night, not too long ago, I had a dream, an incredibly
vivid dream,
wherein I and a bunch of my friends (Who? I don't know. I just know they were, in my
dream world, friends) were sitting around a living room, smoking pipes and talking
theology. I woke up and tweeted about it.
Soon after that, I had an online conversation about the subject with a friend who was
taking up the art.
And soon after that, I spent some time really thinking through the subject. And
eventually, some things became clear to me.
My oppressed feeling was not a message from God. God has given us His word, and it
is sufficient.
My oppressed feeling was the result of me desperately wanting to see
some tangible manifestation of my new faith right away, and telling myself that I
needed to throw away the pipes, and doing it, was the quickest (and ironically, the
easiest) way to see one.
My interest in the pipe wasn't idolatry, it was a strong interest--and one that had peaked,
at that.
Thinking of the Great Pipe Throw-Away as evidence of salvation had a tendency to blind me
to other evidences of salvation.
Worrying about the subject made me less conscious of other, more important things I needed
to change.
Frequent mental back-and-forth on the subject over the years had consumed more mental
energy than I had previously considered.
I wasn't at all likely to go back to being "obsessed" and inconsiderate. I knew now
exactly what I liked and what I wanted and what I wanted to do, and didn't need a large
collection of pipes and tobaccos and books and hours spent online. I just needed a few
pipes and a couple of blends that I liked.
Lastly, it suddenly dawned on me, after 11 years or so (from this, you can see that I'm
nowhere nearly as brilliant as some of my acquaintances seem to think), that if I'd
asked God for a sign that it WASN'T okay to take up the pipe again, I would have received
exactly the same answer! Scripture is sufficient.
When I went to a tobacconist and picked up a little Navy Flake and a corncob pipe (they're
cheap, but they actually smoke decently), I swore I could almost feel the tension break.
I have felt better and better--like I've released the tension from a spring, less like I
was repressing something I knew to be true--ever since, and my spiritual, dietary, and
exercise habits have not changed at all, save in a couple of small instances where they
have actually changed for the better.
Pipe Smoking
and Health
I know; you would think, after the preceding section, that I would next deal with the
subject of Christianity and pipe smoking, but that will be the next section. I choose to
deal with the health aspect of the whole business before the theological end of the affair
because in my experience, people often decide that smoking is
morally wrong because
they believe it to be injurious to health. In terms of moral decision-making, to my mind,
that is a little bit backwards, but that is how it often is! So, let's get started with a
couple of quotes involving cholesterol and diet. If you don't immediately see the
connection between those and smoking, please be patient and read thoroughly; all will be
made clear.
The other disconcerting aspect of these studies is that they
suggested (with the notable exception of three Chicago studies reported by Jeremiah Stamler
and colleagues) low cholesterol levels were associated with a higher risk of cancer. This
link had originally been seen in Seymour Dayton's VA Hospital trial in Los Angeles, and
Dayton and others had suggested that polyunsaturated fats used to lower cholesterol might
be the culprits. This was confirmed in 1972 by Swiss Red Cross researchers. In 1974, the
principal investigators of six ongoing population studies--including Keys, Stamler, William
Kannel of Framingham, and the British epidemiologist Geoffrey Rose--reported in The
Lancet that the men who had developed colon cancer in their populations had
"surprisingly" low levels of cholesterol, rather than the higher levels that they had
initially expected. In 1978, a team of British, Hungarian, and Czech researchers reported
similar findings from a sixteen-thousand-man clinical trial of a cholesterol-lowering
drug. By 1980, this link between cancer and low cholesterol was appearing in study after
study. The most consistent association was between colon cancer and low cholesterol in
men. In the Framingham Study those men whose total cholesterol levels were below 190 mg/dl
were more than three times as likely to get colon cancer as those men with cholesterol
greater than 220; they were almost twice as likely to contract any kind of cancer than
those with cholesterol over 280 mg/dl. This finding was met with "surprise and chagrin."
Manning Feinleib, a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) epidemiologist, told
Science.
And from a subsequent chapter in the same book--Gary Taubes'
Good Calories, Bad Calories:
In the two decades since the NIH, the surgeon general, and the National Academy of Sciences
first declared that all Americans should consume low-fat diets, the research has also
failed to support the most critical aspect of this recommendation: that such diets will
lead to a longer and healthier life. On the contrary, it has consistently indicated that
these diets may cause more harm than good. In 1986, the year before the National
Cholesterol Education Program recommended cholesterol-lowering for every American with
cholesterol over 200 mg/dl, the University of Minnesota epidemiologist David Jacobs visited
Japan, where he learned that Japanese physicians were advising patients to raise
their cholesterol, because low cholesterol levels were linked to hemorrhagic stroke. At
the time, Japanese men were dying from stroke almost as frequently as American men were
succumbing to heart disease. Jacobs looked for this inverse relationship between
stroke and cholesterol in the MRFIT data and found it there, too. And the relationship
transcended stroke: men with very low cholesterol seemed prone to premature death; below
160 mg/dl, the lower the cholesterol, the shorter the life.
In April 1987, the Framingham investigators provided more reason to worry when they finally
published an analysis of the relationship between cholesterol and all mortality. After
thirty years of observation, there was a significant association between high cholesterol
and premature death for men under fifty. But for those over fifty, both men and women, life
expectancy showed no association with cholesterol. This suggested, in turn, that if low
cholesterol did prevent heart disease, then it must raise the risk of dying from
other causes.
This was compounded by what may have been the single most striking result in the history of
the cholesterol controversy, although it passed without comment by the authorities: those
Framingham residents whose cholesterol declined over the first fourteen years of
observations were more likely to die prematurely than those whose cholesterol
remained the same or increased. They died of cardiovascular disease more frequently as
well. The Framingham investigators rejected the possibility that the drop in cholesterol
itself was diet-related--the result of individuals' following AHA recommendations and
eating low-fat diets. Instead, they described it as a "spontaneous fall," and insisted
that it must be caused by other diseases that eventually lead to death, but they offered no
evidence to support that claim.
The association between low cholesterol and higher mortality prompted administrators at the
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute once again to host a workshop and discuss it.
Researchers from nineteen studies around the world met in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1990 to
report their results. The data were completelyconsistent...when investigators tracked all
deaths, not just heart-disease deaths, it was clear that men with cholesterol levels above
240 mg/dl tended to die prematurely because of their increased risk of heart disease.
Those whose cholesterol was below 160 mg/ dl tended to die prematurely with an increased
risk of cancer, respiratory and digestive diseases, and trauma. As for women, if anything,
the higher their cholesterol, the longer they lived.
Now, where
was the last place you read anything like
that? When did you last hear that, for
goodness sakes, the Surgeon General's advice could be
completely wrong?
Think about it: the science indicates pretty clearly, and has for a long time, that people
with lower cholesterol levels tended to die
younger than people with higher
cholesterol levels. Furthermore, lower cholesterol levels were associated with a
higher risk of cancer--three times the risk of colon cancer, as you just read, and
twice the risk of "any cancer," as Mr. Taubes put it.
There is more, much more in Mr. Taubes' book. It explains quite clearly how the
theory drove the
science, rather than the other way 'round, and also how
people who stood to make a little something out of government recommending low-fat diets
were instrumental in getting governmental dietary recommendations (and in some cases,
standards) put in place, policies that have most likely hastened the deaths of
millions. Policies that have almost certainly significantly
raised people's risks
of cancer and heart disease and
certainly raised their risk of diabetes, another
insidious disease.
But you never heard a word about it, did you? Unless you were one of a handful of "cranks"
that automatically distrusted
any statistics--indeed, almost any
information--from government.
I
still see material--magazine headlines and product labeling and so forth--touting
"low-fat" diets, though the uselessness of such an approach to health has been pretty
well-known for some little time now. Most people don't know any better. They just swallow
it all hook, line, and sinker. They just continue to follow advice that may well be
complicit in their early deaths.
And so it is with smoking. Now, let me say at the outset that I am not about to tell you
that
cigarette smoking is good for you. In fact, I am not going to tell you that
smoking,
period, is good for you.
What I
am going to tell you is that I think the risks of smoking, especially pipe
smoking, have been horrifically exaggerated, exaggerated to the point where rational
discussion on the issue is scarcely possible anymore. This is partly because some people--
lots of people--simply cannot mind their own business, and partly because the enormous
stream of revenue sought by government at every level and by trial lawyers simply could not
be obtained from the tobacco business were the product not incessantly demonized. What I
am going to suggest to you is that the risks of smoking
per se, despite decades of
studies, are not much more clearly delineated than what people knew back in the twenties
and thirties, when they were calling cigarettes "coffin nails" and people associated cigars
with successful businessmen and pipes with wise--wise and
old--men. I am going to
suggest to you that one of the reasons people insist that there is no "safe" level of
tobacco use is that when it comes to tobacco, they define "safe" by standards that few, if
any, products in the world could meet. I am going to suggest to you that statistics on
smoking and health are nowhere nearly as reliable as anti-smokers might like to think and
that common sense might be a better guide. I am going to suggest to you that people--
including
you--
routinely take risks greater than those posed by a little pipe
smoking, and if someone tried to get you to stop taking them for the sake of your health or
safety or longevity, you would tell him to blow it out his ear. I am going to suggest to
you that there are activities
considerably riskier than a little pipe smoking--or
smoking,
period, for that matter--about which hardly anyone ever dares say a word.
In short, I am going to suggest to you that the risks of pipe smoking, at least, are not
such as would get the attention of a reasonably well-informed, rational human being making
fair comparisons, that they are risks
not worth worrying about. Let us begin.
After a while, it becomes difficult to take statistics very seriously. For one thing, the
more you read, the clearer it becomes that government at the federal and state levels and
trial attorneys have had, and likely continue to have, a very serious interest in making
these statistics and anyone involved with tobacco look as bad as possible.
For another,
statistics tell you nothing about the fate of any individual smoker--or non-smoker, for
that matter. We've all encountered elderly smokers who appear to have no problems at all.
Statistics are often cited in such a way as to leave definitions unclear. It can be hard (I
would go so far as to say "next to impossible") to sort out the risks from one behavior and
those from another behavior, when both behaviors are frequently seen in the same
individuals. For example, I've seen risk of oral cancer stated to be 2-3 times higher in
smokers than in non-smokers. I have also seen it stated to be SIX times higher--in the same
article that said DRINKERS had six times a teetotaler's risk.
Now, first of all, talking about how "smokers" get oral cancer--or heart disease, or stroke
is ridiculous. "Smokers" is a very broad term, covering both the Marine who smokes 30
cigars a year and the guy who smokes 60 cigarettes a day (they're out there, I've seen
'em). It covers the guy who smokes additive-free English pipe tobacco and doesn't inhale
and the gal who drags deeply on menthols or clove cigarettes. It's like saying "drinkers"
get cirrhosis of the liver or the DTs. "Drinkers" covers everything from the glass-of-red-
wine-with-dinner guy to the in-the-gutter-alcoholic-bumming-nickels-to-buy-"Thunderbird"
guy. Dose and frequency are
critical when it comes to both smoking and drinking, but
just saying "smokers" and "drinkers" glosses right over this crucial point.
And how many smokers have you met who were also teetotalers? And if most "smokers" are
also "drinkers," aren't those stats really a little bit hard to interpret?
What about mild-to-moderate pipe smokers who work out regularly, have a stable family life,
get plenty of rest, eat brightly-colored vegetables, and avoid more than tiny amounts of
refined carbohydrates, pray often, and enjoy their work? Is the sample group of such people
even large enough to draw meaningful statistics? And if not, to what degree can you
isolate the effects of the pipe-smoking from the lack of exercise, from the obesity, from
the liter of Coca-Cola drunk every day, from the lack of spirituality, from the miserable
work environment?
Why doesn't it occur to you at some point that if higher cholesterol levels are associated
with a lower level of certain cancers (or, if the levels are high enough, "any cancers," as
Mr. Taubes puts it in the first of the two quotes) that a medical establishment that is
prescribing cholesterol-lowering statins left and right is actively engaged in promoting
the very cancers it claims to be fighting with its virulent opposition to tobacco use?
Why doesn't it occur to you that a medical establishment that has been
dead wrong on
diet, obesity, and heart disease for
decades, giving the American people and the
federal government advice that has cost and/or ruined only-God-knows-how-many lives, that
is clearly clique- and fad-driven, vulnerable to poorly framed, agenda-driven studies, may
not be all that competent to tell you whether a nice, relaxing pipe in the evening is,
overall, good for you, bad for you, or neutral?
Shoot, I don't know. I have watched the "experts" in one area after another make absolute
fools of themselves in full view of the public, year after year, and nobody seems to
question them, whether it's on economics, on government, Scripture, or health. It often
seems to me that the whole nation is on intellectual autopilot, completely unwilling to
question authority or to investigate much of anything on their own.
Would it help you to understand the situation if you knew that about forty thousand people
in the United States--forty thousand out of well over three hundred million--are diagnosed
with oral cancer every year--about the same number as are killed in traffic accidents every
year? And do you see people campaigning to stop you from "drinking"--whatever
that
means--or from driving?
To bring up a particularly nasty subject, what about homosexuality? The "lifestyle" is
such that it is pretty well known that the average lifespan of male homosexuals in the
United States is
considerably lower than that of heterosexuals, but anyone who
suggests that people ought not to indulge in homosexual activity will be immediately
denounced as a religious bigot.
Sales of motorcycles have
soared over the last ten years or so, haven't they? Yet,
who would argue that you are safer on a motorcycle than you are in car? And have you seen
serious proposals for eliminating motorcycling for the sake of improving average lifespan?
Government routinely makes decisions that put your life at risk--or at least the
lives of some of its citizens. For example, they keep raising the CAFE standards--the
fuel-efficiency standards that automobile manufacturers must meet. Now, while
computerization and technology can
help, the bottom line is that in order to make a
car go further on less fuel, you must lighten its weight, and lightening the weight of the
nation's automobile fleet is a sure recipe for increasing traffic fatalities. Light cars
crumple more easily than heavy cars. Simple as that. More people die for the sake of fuel
efficiency, but it seems that is a risk your government is willing for you to take.
I hate to keep returning to diet, but it is a subject that I know well, partly because of
my work in the medical equipment industry. The odds that you will develop heart disease,
perhaps congestive heart failure, and/or diabetes from your perpetual obesity are really
quite high. If you will excuse the phrase, I'd say that the
majority of the
patients with whom I deal fit this--ahem!--profile. And yet the federal government
continues to subsidize the production of corn, which ends up getting used largely in the
production of corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup, the use of which is a major factor
in becoming obese. In other words, the federal government is subsidizing a product that is
well known to contribute to the morbidity of the citizenry.
It subsidizes corn syrup and demonizes tobacco. Just spiffing. And you think the
government is concerned about your
health?
Friends, if you're more than thirty years old and haven't yet figured out that when it
comes right down to it, government is primarily concerned with
power and
revenue, I'd suggest you pay more attention.
The reality is that your chances of contracting oral cancer from
any cause are
actually pretty low, and that is pretty much the worst risk you face from pipe smoking, the
risks of all other potential effects being so low they are actually kind of hard to
measure. If all you are doing is smoking a pipeful of tobacco--or even two or three!--every
evening and having a glass of wine with your dinner, the odds of you contracting oral
cancer are just not high enough for you to waste mental energy worrying about it, any more
than there is any point in worrying yourself to a nub every time you get in the car to go
to the grocery store.
I recall discussing the issue with a theoretical physicist I once knew--I used to be a
member of
Mensa (and before you get started, yes, I could rejoin any time),
you know, and knew highly intelligent people from all walks of life--one time, and as soon
as he grasped the fundamental point, he said, "Oh, I get it: what's the point in worrying
about having three times a vanishingly-small risk?" Would that everyone could grasp such a
simple point!
You know, sometimes I recall a Monty Python skit that involved a "Mr. Smoketoomuch." We
used to have that concept in our culture--the idea that a person could smoke
too
much, which of course implies that there is some level at which a person is
not
smoking
too much. What is that level?
One of the most amusing, and most telling, things I found during my Googling was that
someone had asked a question--basically, how many cigars can I smoke and be safe? And, of
course, no one had really answered the question. Every available answer was some variety
of, "There is no safe level of tobacco use."
That is ridiculous. How stupid. When I was in the Marine Corps Reserve, I used to know
Marines who didn't smoke most of the year, but when they went on ATD (Annual Training
Duty--two weeks every summer), they used to buy a fistful of cigars and smoke them. You
can't seriously mean to tell me that those Marines were as "unsafe" as the man who smokes
two packs of cigarettes a day for his entire adult life! Or, suppose a man decides to try
cigars, and after smoking but one, decides he's never had such an awful experience in his
life and never has another one. You mean to tell me that such a man is "unsafe" in the
same way as the "smokers" who are allegedly so many multiples more likely to contract a
variety of loathsome diseases? Of course he wouldn't be! Simple common sense should tell
you that if you don't think it's "safe" to smoke
one measly cigar during your entire
lifetime, you have set the bar of "safe" way too high!
Yet it will take you very little
googling indeed to find people telling you that there is "no" safe level of tobacco use.
It's intellectual rot-gut of the first water, something that should be immediately obvious
to anyone willing to give the matter, say, thirty seconds of serious consideration, but it
seems to me that most non-smokers don't give it those thirty seconds.
If tobacco use presents a risk, obviously more tobacco use presents more risk than less
tobacco use and
vice versa. And at some point, the frequency of usage has to be low
enough that the risk from tobacco use, whilst not disappearing entirely, perhaps, becomes
small enough that you are justified in pretty much forgetting about it. That is not really
in question, not amongst people who really want to think about the subject. The question
is really, "What is that level of use?" And the answer is that no one really knows. There
are too many variables, and too much bad science, some of which has made its way into
governmental recommendations.
It is a stubborn, if curious, fact that even among cigarette smokers, who are at
far
more risk than any other kind of tobacco user, about fifty percent of them
do not
die of smoking-related illnesses. This alone ought to tell you that cigarettes are not
infallible causes of disease, and neither are pipes or cigars. There are too many other
factors to be reckoned with to say any such thing.
No doctor, no scientist, can look at any given individual, and bet his life that that
particular man will get a particular smoking-related disease, or even
any smoking-
related disease, not before diagnostic indicators begin to appear.If a man begins smoking
10 pipefuls of tobacco a day, or 50 cigarettes, or 10 cigars, nobody in the world can look
at him a week after he started and say, "You will, with 100 percent certainty, develop
disease X at some point in your life." It can't be done. All that can be done is to say
that tobacco smoke has certain effects, one of which is to raise the odds of contracting
some illnesses.
No, no one really knows for sure at just what point a person is justified in pretty much
forgetting about the risk involved in his smoking--or in starting to worry about it. But
it isn't like people haven't tried to figure it out. Back in the days before the majority
of people completely lost their minds on the subject of smoking, it used to be respectable
to think about what a "safer" cigarette would be like. After all, it was reasoned, it was
hardly likely that millions upon millions of American cigarette smokers could be quickly
persuaded to quit completely, so if you could market a safer cigarette, many lives might be
saved thereby. As
Jacob Sullum tells the story,
In 1976 Gori, a microbiologist who
oversaw the government's safer-cigarette research as director of the NCI's Smoking and
Health Program, argued in Science that "low-toxicity cigarettes hold significant
promise in the prevention of diseases related to smoking." Gori looked at various
epidemiological studies to see at what level of smoking they were able to detect an
increased risk of disease. For lung cancer, the average was 5.7 cigarettes a day. For
coronary heart disease, it was 3.5. For all smoking-related diseases, it was 2. Based on
these data and information about the composition of smoke from pre-1960 cigarettes (the
kind smoked by subjects in the studies), he estimated "critical values" for tar, nicotine,
carbone monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanide, and acrolein. Gori emphasized that
"it would be erroneous to interpret these critical values as indicators of safe smoking
levels." But he concluded that "a rapid shift in cigarette consumption habits toward the
proposed range of critical values would make it reasonable to expect that the current
epidemic proportions of smoking-related diseases could be reduced to minimal levels in
slightly over a decade."
Two years later, Gori went a step further. Writing in JAMA, he and Cornelius J. Lynch, a
scientist involved in the NCI-funded research, noted that the levels of toxic components in
cigarette smoke had changed dramatically since 1960. On the basis of laboratory analyses
of the smoke from twenty-seven low-yield brands, they estimated how many of each would be
equivalent to two pre-1960 cigarettes in terms of the six components they measured. Nine
Benson & Hedges Lights, twenty-eight Lucky 100s, and seventy-two Carlton Menthols, for
example, yielded as much tar as two pre-1960 cigarettes. You could smoke four Benson &
Hedges Lights, eight Lucky 100s, or twenty-three Carlton Menthols without exceeding the
"critical value" for any of the six measured components. Gori and Lynch again emphasized
that "these are by no means safe levels but merely imply that, for a smoker whose daily
consumption does not exceed these levels, any attendant tobacco-related mortality risk may
be epidemiologically indiscernible from that of a nonsmoker."
Gori's suggestions for harm reduction did not fit well with the mood of the public health
establishment. As he later put it, "The new policy was: Smokers shouldn't be helped;
smokers should be eliminated."
Now, there are a couple of things to note here.
One is that as far back as the 1970s, at least a couple of scientists were acknowledging
the obvious: that there logically
has to be some level of smoking at which one can
no longer discern an increased risk of smoking-related illnesses. The question to ask is,
"What is that level?" Is it ten cigarettes a day? Or is it one cigarette in a lifetime?
Gori's answer back then was, more-or-less, two old-fashioned cigarettes a day. That is
consistent with what I remember reading in that old Surgeon General's report and with what
I have read in the mortality tables I have seen since--you remember? Two cigarettes a day,
3 cigars a day, 5 pipefuls a day?
The second thing I would draw your attention to--it is elaborated in Sullum's subsequent
material--is that the "public health establishment" wanted nothing to do with "safer
cigarettes." Likewise, they have wanted nothing to do with cigarette smokers switching to
either pipes or cigars, even though it is well known that the risks associated with pipes
or cigars are far, far lower than the risks of smoking cigarettes.
When the "public health establishment" talks about tobacco, it cannot concede
anything, not even the obvious. To do so would undermine the agenda of those who
have a utopian dream of completing eliminating tobacco use from the planet, and also
undercut the agenda of those governmental and trial-lawyering entities who realize that if
smoking is in any way legitimized,it will be far more difficult to milk their little cash
cow.
When you're dealing with people like this, people with obvious commitments to obvious
agendas, you do well to take what they have to say with a grain of salt.
Again, none of this is to say that moderate pipe smoking is utterly without risk. I am
simply pointing out that what common sense and the none-too-scientific but nevertheless
usually fairly accurate assessments of millions of people over long periods of time tell
you is not at all outside the bounds of scientific possibility: that there
is such a
thing as smoking too much; that it is therefore plausible that there is such a thing as
smoking, but not smoking too much; that cigarettes are much worse for your health than any
other form of smoking, and that, when it comes to cigars and pipes, you pretty much have to
smoke like a furnace before you run levels of risk worth worrying about.
Let me flesh that last point out a bit, as non-smokers may have no clue. As I've said,
it's 3 cigars or 5 pipefuls a day--or two cigarettes. Now, most people are familiar with
about how long it takes to smoke a cigarette. They've seen too many people duck outside
for a quick smoke break not to be familiar with it. How long does it take? About seven
minutes, max? So you've got about fourteen minutes cigarette-smoking time a day before you
run an appreciable risk, right?
How long does it take to smoke a cigar? Well, you know, it's been so long since I smoked a
cigar that I couldn't be sure of my recollection, so I asked a couple of cigar-smoking
friends of mine. Their answers may interest you. Both gentlemen shall remain nameless.
Here's the question I asked:
Question for you; as part of some comments I'm
preparing, I'd like to make reference to about how long it takes to smoke a cigar, but it's
been so long since I smoked one I am no longer certain. If you don't mind the question,
about how long does it take you to smoke most cigars? And about how many do you smoke in a
week?
and the first gentleman's answer:
Maybe a couple hours? I
never really think about it when I do it. Lots of times I let it burn out and finish the
next day. 2-3 a week, some weeks 5, some weeks 0. They keep in a proper humidor forever so
there's no rush.
and the second gentleman's answer:
I've been
smoking cigars off and on for about 20 years so yes, I can give you some time frames on how
long it take to smoke a stogie. In fact, that is what has drawn me to my pipe is the time
difference; that and pipe tobacco is cheaper, especially if you purchase it in bulk.
(Cigars can run as much as 10-20 dollars for ONE compared to 4-5 dollars an ounce of pipe
tobacco). For what I would spend on a box of cigars I could get a decent pipe and all my
accessories. However, there are still times when I like a good cigar and these are when I
have time. What is key to smoking a cigar is NEVER try to rush through one. Take a few hits
then let it "rest" for a minute or so then take more hits. The draw should always be cool
and not have a nasty taste. That being said it has taken me somewhere in the neighborhood
of about one to one hour and a half on average; the shortest time it's taken me is probably
forty five minutes. As for how many a week? Before I discovered pipes, would smoke a cigar
once to twice a week. It all goes back to time; I get off work late and the last thing I
want to do every night or every other night is light up a cigar and spend the next hour and
a half out back, then go to bed. These smokes are for the weekends.
One man
claims 2-3 cigars a week, the other, 1 or 2. Both men indicate that it probably takes 90
to 120 minutes to smoke a cigar. So, let's note first: our "three cigars a day" level of
smoking would be
about four and a half hours of cigar-smoking time
per day.
That's
before you start to find meaningful differences in mortality rates. Four and
half hours versus fourteen minutes.
That's how much more lethal cigarettes are than
cigars.
Now: how long does it take to smoke a pipe? I can answer that one from my own experience:
depending on the size of the pipe and the tobacco I put in it, it takes me anywhere from 45
to 90 minutes to smoke a pipeful, with about an hour or so probably being typical. In
other words, if we take our hypothetical five pipefuls a day as the cut-off, I have about
five hours of smoking a day before I enter the realm of noticeably increased
mortality rates.
Are you beginning to see what I mean about having to smoke like a furnace if you're a cigar
smoker or a pipe smoker? Seriously, with these two methods of enjoying tobacco, you really
have to smoke
a lot in order to run a risk worth worrying about.
Now, we must also note, secondly, that neither of these two cigar smokers, despite fairly
frequent comments about smoking on Facebook, could be fairly said to be smoking very much.
If you take the high range of each man's estimate and average them, they are smoking two
and a half cigars a week. Both men, according to the current state of my knowledge, are
starting to smoke pipes, too, but my impression is that they are not really smoking more,
or at least not much more, just that they are smoking more pipefuls and fewer cigars, so
that the overall amount of time they are smoking is about the same.
And how much do I smoke? I suppose, if you were to guess from the amount of pipe-related
stuff I've put up on Facebook lately, you might think that I smoke quite a lot. The
reality is otherwise. I
try to smoke at least one pipeful a day, but often, I do
not succeed. I only smoke in the house when my wife, who is asthmatic, is going to be
absent for a few days. I do not have enough time to really enjoy smoking whilst driving to
or from work. I am not supposed to smoke in the company vehicle. My half-hour lunch break
precludes smoking more than half a bowl, and even then, it would mean skipping lunch in
order to smoke. This means that my smoking is
generally confined to a pipeful
enjoyed on the porch of an evening, with a book in my lap.
Knowing that I would be including this information in a blogpost, I have kept track of the
number of pipefuls I've smoked since resuming pipe smoking, and, divided by the number of
days since I resumed it, I am averaging .69 pipefuls a day.
Point
Six
Nine
Friends, need I belabor the point that in all likelihood, the cigar and pipe smokers you
know are simply not all that likely to be smoking enough to worry about it? How many
people do you actually know who spend more than five hours a day smoking pipes and/or
cigars? Do you know
anybody like that? I don't. With all the restrictions on
where you can smoke these days, for all but a handful of people, it would seem to be
impossible to spend hours every day smoking pipes or cigars.
To return to points I've already made, then, we know--and have known for decades--that
in practical terms, a person can smoke a few pipefuls a day--or even one or two
cigarettes--and run very little risk of smoking-related illness. We know that
government has, for
decades, pushed a nutritional agenda that has conspicuously
raised the risk of cancer in general and certain cancers in particular. You can bet
your bottom dollar that a lot of those cancers are unfairly blamed on tobacco use. We know
that there are very definite agendas on the part of certain entities:
money, for
governments at all levels and for trial lawyers;
power, for people in government;
prestige (or at least not being opposed to "consensus") for people in educational
and scientific fields; and what I can only describe as
sanctimonious snottiness on
the part of people who just think it's their business to regulate what other people do with
their lives. With all these factors at work, why would I not say, with Mark
Twain,
I don't want any
of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.
I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is
injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he
wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and
in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally;
and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. And you are always figuring out how many
women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive
hoops, etc. etc.
You never see more than one side of the question.
You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although,
according to your theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen
drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet
grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort,
relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is
worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate
of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not
smoking.
You know, I have a good deal more faith in the common wisdom of
people over the generations than I do in statistics that, frankly, often rest on very
questionable assumptions. People have long known that smoking cigarettes is bad for you;
they were called "coffin nails"
way before any Surgeon General's reports came out.
People could
see what smoking cigarettes did to you; they could hear the cigarette
smoker's racking cough in the morning, they could see the diminished lung power, etc., and
it didn't take scientific studies for cigarettes to earn a bad reputation. But save among
a relatively small number of anti-tobacco zealots, pipes never had such a reputation, and
cigars had a much better reputation than cigarettes, and I am convinced that it was because
people in general never noticed a strong correlation between moderate pipe or cigar smoking
and massive health breakdowns. Indeed, they noticed in pipe smokers a generally calmer and
less stressed disposition than many members of the public enjoy.
You never saw a pipe or cigar smoker with smoker's cough, did you? Not unless, maybe, they
were former or current cigarette smokers, too, or unless they inhaled, which few pipe or
cigar smokers do. I am quite convinced that if cigarette smoking had never become
widespread, we would not ever have bothered to have a Surgeon General's report on smoking
and health. The health consequences of cigar, and especially pipe smoking, are not such as
attract people's attention.
I suppose I ought to try again to sum up and draw these thoughts together. It is
difficult. The reality is that this material was written over a period of weeks, and now
it's jumbled to the point where it would probably take me a whole day to un-jumble it. But
in the end...well, as I keep saying, I've been working on this post for some little time,
just as I get a little time from day to day. Often, it has been just a few minutes at the
beginning of the day, whilst I'm drinking my coffee--which I take, as I've often said to my
co-workers, "without crap in it," that is, black and unsweetened. And as a rule, soon
after I've made a few notes or written a few sentences, I have gone to get some exercise.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, it's calisthenics--pull-ups, burpees, and sit-ups. Three
sets of three pull-ups, then burpees and sit-ups. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, it's
running--two miles on Tuesday and Thursday and that much or more on Saturday. That is just
what I do to maintain some muscle and lung power; it doesn't include the karate, which is
still exercise, but not quite as intense, more what you might call "moderate" exercise,
being focused more on balance and skill development than on muscle and wind.
I eat less garbage than most people I know. Less sugar, less corn syrup, less refined
starch. I make a point of it. I have come to regard the stuff as darned near lethal, at
least in quantity, and while it is very difficult to completely avoid it in this country,
there is no need to eat more of it than you have to. Except around Christmastime. Maybe.
And it shows. According to my home monitor, my blood pressure is typically around 110/70,
and my resting pulse rate is usually somewhere around 60. I look strong, or at least for a
fifty-year-old man, I look strong. You might find it amusing, but whenever my ESL students
have the opportunity to exercise their English skills by describing me, the most commonly
used adjective is "strong" (One lady was kind enough to say, though she said it in Spanish,
"
guapo") And I look fit.
I think I could stand to lose another ten or twelve pounds; others claim not to be able to
see any extra weight on me.
Now: I have been keeping track of my smoking in my little pocket calendar, just like I keep
track of many other things. And since I resumed smoking, would you believe that I have
averaged .69--read carefully, that is point-six-nine, not sixty-nine--pipefuls a day? Not
even a whole pipeful every day! There are days where all I manage to get in is a half-
bowl, and there are days where I don't smoke at all. You might think it's funny that I
would go to the trouble of writing this enormous post (although you should bear in mind it
was written in bits and pieces over a weeks-long period) when I smoke less than a pipeful a
day on average.
I don't know how people smoke more than that. I know they do, but they have to have
different jobs and lifestyles.
I am, as of this writing, a medical equipment driver/ATP
(
Assistive Technology
Professional, if you want to know). I do not have a desk job and cannot smoke at my
desk. I am not supposed to smoke in the company vehicle. I live only twelve miles from
work, so a quarter-bowl is as much as I can get through on the way to or from work and I
don't often bother. I cannot smoke in the house due to an asthmatic wife, and even if I
could, I have enough other things on my agenda that it would be difficult to smoke more
than a bowl or so a day.
And yet you can bet your bottom dollar that some bloated barge of a human being--no offense
intended to the bloated barges I know--will see me smoking my pitiful little .69th of a
bowl of tobacco and tut-tut over the risk I am taking with
my health.
How absurd. And yet, how typical. You look at pudgy little Henry Waxman, or pudgy little
Hillary Clinton, or any of the other pudgy or outright bloated, out-of-shape people in
Congress who would cheerfully jack tobacco taxes up 2000 percent, and tell me that
they are healthier than I am, solely because they don't use a little tobacco. I
will laugh at you.
I must relate an anecdote, and then a link to a very amusing little bit of writing, before
closing this section.
Since I resumed smoking, I have bought a few pipes on
E-
Bay, and continue to window-shop, knowing that eventually I am going to snag a real
bargain. Amongst the pipes I look at are old GBDs, and last time I looked, there were
multiple listings from the same seller. Apparently, this lady was trying to sell off the
pipe collection, which was
enormous, of a man who'd recently died. The pipes had
belonged to him and his father, and, to look at the pictures, it was clear that they had
all been well-used. These weren't occasional puffers; they were obviously fairly heavy
smokers.
What got my attention was that in every pipe's description, the seller noted that it had
belonged to a man who had recently died "in his late 80s." Yes, it is clear: 60 or more
years of, as Twain put it, "the fatal practice of smoking" finally got him!
Now, the link is to a little piece called
SMOKERS DIE "EARLY"....
It is quite tongue in cheek and I thought it definitely chuckle-worthy, pointing out, as
it does, that rather a lot of very old people made it to their ripe old ages in spite of
having poisoned themselves with tobacco for decades. I haven't fact-checked the article,
and I was not familiar with all the names mentioned, but I had heard of some of them, like
Jean Calment, and I quote the section dealing with her:
Mme Jeanne Calment, who
was listed as the world's oldest human whose birth date could be certified, died at 122.
She had begun smoking as a young woman. At 117 she quit smoking (by that age she was just
smoking two or three cigarettes per day because she was blind and was too proud to ask
often for someone to light her cigarettes for her). But she resumed smoking when she was
118 because, as she said, not smoking made her miserable and she was too old to be made
miserable. She also said to her doctor: "Once you've lived as long as me, only then can you
tell me not to smoke." Good point! [USA Today, "Way to go, champ,"
10/18/95].
Really, go read the article. You'll enjoy it--unless you're a die-
hard anti-smoker without a shred of humor in your soul.
Christianity and Tobacco
One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how Christians--in North America, at
least--will seemingly just turn
off parts of their thinking apparatus when it comes
to certain people and subjects. They
love C.S. Lewis,
Narnia,
Mere
Christianity,
The Screwtape Letters,
The Space Trilogy, and
The
Abolition of Man, but amazingly often, the same people who love Lewis' reasoning on
these subjects will come to the subjects of his beer-drinking and pipe-smoking and think,
without really thinking about it, that this beloved scholar and author just must not have
been as enlightened on those subjects as their own tee-totaling, non-smoking selves.
Every Christian I have met and with whom I've discussed the subject has adored Tolkien's
The Hobbit and
The Lord of the
Rings, and they are even entertained by the pipe-smoking therein--and yet, if you
actually were to light up a pipe in their presence, many of them would look at you like you
had just sprayed the room down with Raid.
Some folks out there--sad to say, I can pretty much guess
who--will object that
smoking is a sin. To that, I must say that I do not think you can prove it from
scripture, and frankly, if you cannot prove it from
scripture, I really do
not care much for what else you might have to say about the subject.
Now, the first thing to note is that smoking tobacco is simply not mentioned in scripture.
It is not there. Just reading the Bible, I am convinced, would never put it into your head
that smoking is a sin. Nor would it even occur to you that it might ever be something
about which you should be concerned, lest you over-tempt a weaker brother. Seriously: from
which biblical
text would you draw such ideas? There is nothing there! These
notions come entirely from
outside the Bible; they are not addressed in it. They
are as foreign to it as the idea that drinking soda might be a sin. And yet millions of
Christians believe it!
Millions more of us are left wondering how on earth the first group dares to interpret
texts that are not there.
Ultimately, I am convinced that much, maybe
most, Christian opposition to moderate
smoking (I am not championing excessive smoking any more than I champion excessive
drinking) comes not from scripture, but from generations-old, badly-reasoned teaching that
smoking is "worldly." Now, you would never get that impression from just reading the
Bible. I do not believe that anyone would, were the idea not planted in his head before he
read it. But because people go to church and hear the preacher and often don't trouble
themselves to actually dissect what the preacher is saying, they just pick up these
erroneous ideas like dogs pick up burrs when they walk through a field. Further, when
challenged (if they are ever challenged) on the point, they will repeat the arguments their
preachers used without ever really having thought them through, and then act shocked if
someone should regard them as less than inarguable.
This whole subject--smoking--is one of those weird little things about Baptist life in
particular. There is the acknowledgement by some that smoking
per se is not a sin,
the common phrase "smoking won't send you to Hell, it'll just make you smell like you've
already been there," the seminary president's picture with him holding a pipe (I'm told
it's long since gone), etc., but somehow, it's frowned upon, and not just for health
reasons. It's just become a part of Baptist expectations that you not drink or smoke,
etc., and if you correctly point out that such commands don't exist, you will immediately
be suspected of being "worldly."
You might think that the foregoing is more than a little bit silly, but shortly before I
published this post, I heard much the same thing yet again! I heard a man, a man whose
judgement in many things is very reliable, say that no, there are no clear Biblical
commands against drinking, smoking, watching certain movies, and so forth, but that there
were
certain people (Hello!) who would
defend Christian liberty in those areas to
the death, but not consider whether or not those behaviors made them look more like Jesus
or more like the world.
It blew my mind that I could sit there and listen to a man even half-suggest that defending
Christian liberty could in any way be bad, but there it was, in all its naked glory. I had
to wonder why on earth we
shouldn't defend Christian liberty--after all, it's not
like it's not under constant assault! Has been ever since the early days of the church!
Why else do you think Paul wrote:
If you have died with Christ to the elementary
principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to
decrees, such as, "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!"
(which all refer to things destined to perish with use)--in accordance with the
commandments and teachings of men?
These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion
and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body,but are of no value against fleshly
indulgence. Col. 2:20-23
I noticed--
believe me, I noticed--that he
didn't include wearing makeup in his list, even though it sure used to be on the unofficial
Baptist list of "worldly" behaviors. Wouldn't have been wise of him. His wife wears
makeup, along with every other woman in the church, as far as I can tell. You can bet had
he tried to slip
that one into the list, he would have never heard the end of it!
I really do wonder if some of you are getting the full impact of the passage I quoted. In
fact, I go beyond wondering; I will say that some of you flat-out miss it, despite a
seminary education, in some cases. Let me knock a little bit of it out, just to highlight
what you
should notice without me having to spoon-feed it to you:
...why,
as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees...in accordance with
the commandments and teachings of men?
Does that help? Do you better
understand what Paul is telling you here? As plain as day, he is telling you that
submitting yourself to man-made commandments and teachings that do not have their origin in
the Word of God
is to act as though you were living in the world. And if
submitting to such commands is said to be like living in the world, what are we to
say of
making up such commands?
I sometimes wonder how on earth such people decide that drinking, smoking, etc., is
"worldly." Is it because people "in the world" do it? That doesn't seem smart to me.
After all, people "in the world" do a
lot of things. They drink soda. They eat
twinkies. They listen to "Gangnam Style" on the radio. They listen to Rush Limbaugh on
the radio. They watch Sean Hannity on cable TV. They drive cars. They use telephones.
They enlist in the military. They go to work. They have--ahem!--marital relations. They
parent children. They care for the elderly. They cook. They clean.
If you want to know where this kind of thinking can lead, visit an Amish farmhouse and ask
to use the telephone sometime. It'll be out by the side of the road, if they own one at
all--telephones in the house being "worldly" and all.
You know, you don't have to guess at this stuff. The Bible actually tells you what the
answers are. Let's go first to 1 John 2:15-16:
Do not love the world nor the
things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For
all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful
pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
You will note, I
hope, that drinking, dancing, card-playing, smoking, wearing make-up, and so forth, do
not make the list of the things that are "in the world." You can, if you like,
flesh out the "lust of the flesh" part by going to Galatians 5:19-21:
Now the
deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry,
sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions,
envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these...
Now, put John and
Paul together, and what have you got? The things of the world--wordly things--are: "the
lust of the flesh," which includes "immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery,
enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying,
drunkenness, carousing, and things like these" and the lust of the eyes and the boastful
pride of life."
Drunkenness--not having a
drink. And so forth. You will notice the list as a
whole is concerned with pride of possession and of position, with out-of-control appetites
and illicit sexual behavior, with inappropriate emotions and useless arguing, not smoking,
not friendly card games, not movies, not a mug of beer, not lipstick, etc.
We have gotten to the point where people will now suggest from the pulpit that we should
consider abstaining from behaviors that Jesus indulged in--drinking wine, for example--lest
we appear to be "worldly."
To my mind, that is a step too close to saying that Jesus appeared worldly--which is, of
course, similar to a charge that the Pharisees leveled against Him (and Paul, too!), and it
deserves much the same response.
Let me suggest to you, if you want to keep your church members from "looking like the
world," that you encourage them to concentrate on:
...love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...
things
which are in short supply in the world, and will do more to differentiate your flock from
the world than abstaining from things they were never commanded to abstain from ever will!
I used to think that not enough Christians have actually read the entire Bible, and I still
think that, but I now think that more Christians have read it than I once believed.
However, I am quite sure that relatively few Christians, despite the cornucopia of study
Bibles and commentaries available, have read the Bible
analytically instead of
devotionally. That is not intended to be a criticism, just an observation. Put in
stark terms, though, it means that an awful lot of Christians read their Bibles for comfort
and encouragement, but do not look to it to evaluate what they are taught from the pulpit
as much as they could.
At any rate--meandered a bit, haven't I?--smoking isn't mentioned in Scripture.
The first thing that someone will say is, "Well, snorting
cocaine isn't mentioned in
scripture, either!" and, of course, he will be quite right. However, it seems to me that
likening smoking tobacco to snorting cocaine is bordering on silliness. Cocaine is an
intoxicant; no one uses cocaine for any purpose but to become intoxicated. The Bible
does prohibit drunkenness, which is naught but intoxication, and I don't think it
matters much whether you are intoxicated with alcohol or with cocaine or anything else.
Therefore, I think the biblical case against cocaine is pretty much a slam-dunk: Christians
shouldn't use it.
Tobacco is not an intoxicant. The worst chain-smokers I have ever seen could not fairly be
described by any reasonable observer as intoxicated.
In short, "someone" has made a
correct but completely irrelevant point. Let us move on.
I can really only think of three other arguments that I have heard Christians make against
smoking. One is that smoking is harmful, and since the body is the temple of Christ, we
shouldn't smoke. One is that, sure, smoking
per se isn't sinful, but since there
might be a "weaker brother" out there somewhere, we shouldn't smoke. The last is that
smoking is poor stewardship.
As regards the first argument, that smoking harms the temple of Christ, I think this
argument is poorly drawn. It is true that the Bible talks about the body being the temple,
but the point being made is not that the body should be maintained in as perfect a
condition as is possible, which, besides being nearly impossible, leads only to time-
wasting fanaticism as regards every health habit imaginable. The point is that believers
shouldn't use the temple of Christ to commit sin! It is also, I think, fair to question
whether "smoking" is "harmful," given some of the material discussed in the section of this
post devoted to health.
As regards the second argument, the "weaker brother" argument, I must say that the verses
on this subject are consistently some of the most poorly applied--indeed,
hypocritically applied--and understood in the whole of scripture. Paul does indeed
talk about abstaining from wine and meat and so forth under some circumstances. The most
relevant wording is (from the ESV, and although there are more verses that could be used,
in my opinion, they mostly draw out and explain these from other
perspectives):
It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that
causes your brother to stumble.
How many times have these words been used to
prohibit drinking alcohol 'mongst church members? Beyond count, I am sure! And smoking is
not far behind! And yet it is grossly misapplied, as is:
...if your brother is
grieved by what you eat...
...or presumably, smoke...
...you are no
longer walking in love.
The idea that is always presented with these verses, in
my experience, is that, no, smoking is not discussed
per se as a sin, but, since
there are Christians out there who are persuaded that it
is a sin, the fact that
they might be tempted into smoking by the fact that
we smoke should be enough to
dissuade
us from smoking for
their sakes. Some will even say that if other
Christians are
upset by the fact that we smoke, even if they are not tempted to
smoke themselves, that is sufficient reason to abstain.
I don't think such interpretations are tenable at all. For one thing, if those
interpretations are correct, then, frankly, there is nothing, no activity on earth, in
which you can partake and they would lead to the near-extinction of Christianity within a
generation, for there is nothing you can think of, I am sure, about which someone,
some
where does not have a tender conscience. Eating meat, because it is mentioned
in these verses, is the most glaring example. Let me state it plainly:
the exact same
reasoning by which people attempt, using these verses, to prohibit Christians from drinking
wine (or smoking) inevitably means that all Christians must be vegetarians.
You could
easily,
very easily, use these verses and such reasoning to prohibit sex even within
marriage, for there are surely some
sadly deluded weak brothers somewhere
in the world who think that even married sex is sinful. And without sex, friends, there
are no children born to Christians.
Using these verses and such reasoning, you could quickly extinguish just about every
behavior in which human beings partake, no matter how innocent.
Have you
ever seen a Southern Baptist or Evangelical of any stripe--or, for that
matter, a Christian,
period--argue that that church members shouldn't eat
barbecue because "some eat only vegetables?" It may seem like an absurd suggestion,
but, really, the reasoning is exactly the same as that used against smoking!
Do you really think that by these verses, Paul, guided by the Holy Spirit, intended to ban
every behavior that might tempt, or grieve, some believer somewhere?
I don't. I don't think that at all. You might note, in your reading of these verses, that
these are not stated as hypotheticals. That is, the phrasing is not, "that might cause
your brother to stumble..." and not, "...if your brother might be grieved...". The words
are
"that causes" and
"is grieved".These are not possibilities, these are not
hypotheticals, these are not someone, somewhere else, who isn't on the scene and may not
even know you exist. These are people whom you
know, at least slightly. This is
something that is
actually happening.
You should also keep in mind that there is a yawning chasm, a world of difference, between
your brother being "grieved" at what you do and your brother being annoyed that you don't
think he's correct and do as he wishes.
Nor are these verses talking about necessarily refraining from eating meat, drinking wine
(or smoking) because of, or even in the presence of, Christians whom you know simply
disagree with you on those subjects. The idea is very clear: you are not to be, by doing
these things, cajoling or influencing a brother to
actually do something which he is
convinced is sinful. If your brother is personally convinced that eating meat (to use a
wild example which no one in the church would ever actually use today, despite the plain
fact that the reasoning is
exactly what people would use to discourage alcoholic
beverages) is sinful, but doesn't mind that you have a baloney sandwich, you are perfectly
free to do so. Now, if he is actually seriously upset at the sight of your supposed sin
("grieves"), then, out of consideration for him, you might want to wait 'til later to have
your lunch. And if your friend is a former alcoholic and simply hasn't the self-control to
handle the presence of a glass of wine, then--duh!--you ought to wait 'til later to drink
your wine. And of course, if your friend just hates the smell of tobacco smoke and thinks
he's going to die of cancer ten seconds after he gets a whiff, you should have enough
consideration not to smoke around him. And God knows you ought to have enough sense not to
smoke around someone with lung problems or tobacco allergies! And so forth.
But skip the baloney (or your smoke) altogether, forever? Especially for someone you do
not even know, who might only have
heard that you eat baloney (or smoke)? I don't
think the application can be legitimately drawn. If it could, what do you do with the
verses that show Jesus turning water into wine (I know; you will tell me that, in that
case, it was "grape juice," even though linguistically, culturally, and situationally, it
makes no sense at all and there is not the slightest justification for such an
interpretation in the text), that show Jesus drinking wine Himself, that tell us the
elements of the Lord's Supper, that advise Timothy to drink, not just water, but a little
wine for the sake of his stomach? What will you do with the verses that talk about wine
making glad the heart of man? What will you do with the verses showing Jesus eating the
Passover feast, which involved a roast lamb?
Given the whole of the Bible, I think the meaning of these verses is pretty clear: you
shouldn't be doing something around someone if he is actually going to do, as a result of
you doing it around him, something he is convinced is sinful. Nor should you be
doing something blatantly inconsiderate around him, or something that genuinely upsets him
to see you doing.
But beyond that?
I read a post somewhere once that talked about how some people are "professional
weaker brethren." I have even met one--at
least one, for sure. These are
people who are not really at risk at all of violating their consciences on a given subject,
but will tell you otherwise in an attempt to control your behavior, and not just when you
are around
them! And yes, I am suggesting that, at least to a degree, they lie to
themselves and everyone around them when they do this.
The one whom I have personally met and knew fairly well, although he was a fine fellow in
many respects, furnishes a fine example. He would tell you with a straight face that you
shouldn't drink because of the "weaker brother," and
he was that weaker brother!
Now, there was no more risk of him touching a drop of beer or of
uisge de bheatha or
wine or anything else alcoholic than there is of you jumping to the top of the Empire State
Building, but, since he couldn't demonstrate from scripture that drinking
per se was
a sin, he would say that sort of thing to make sure that you never touched a drop
in
spite of there not being any such commandment.
I wonder what this golf-playing brother would have said if I had pointed out that some
"weaker brother" might think that golf was a sinful waste of time that should be spent on
evangelism (which, I assure you, is a position held by some brother, somewhere).
Actually, I don't have to wonder. I heard him once (bear in mind that he was more than a
little fat), when he was preaching, say something like this, "Now, someone will say, 'But,
Bro. *****, isn't
gluttony a sin?' Well, yeah...but put a gluttonous man behind the
wheel of a car, and he doesn't kill anybody."
In other words,
my sin (gluttony) isn't nearly as bad as your sin
(having a drink). And therefore it's okay. Kind of. Can we stop talking about me now and
get back to you?
In all my life, I don't think I have ever actually been around someone who was convinced
that smoking is morally wrong and was even slightly tempted to take it up by the knowledge
that I smoked, let alone anyone who
actually smoked because of my example. Same
thing with drinking wine, and so forth. There might possibly have been one or two who,
talking to me, became persuaded that smoking was not a sin, but that is not the same thing.
If I persuade a man that smoking is not sinful and he subsequently takes it up, he is not
violating his conscience. He has ceased to be a
weaker brother, at least in that
sense.
I
have been around people who didn't want me to smoke around them, and I respect
that, and don't smoke around them. Of course I wouldn't do that. It's only common
courtesy.
But not smoke, on the specious theory that some brother, somewhere, might be led to smoke,
despite his fervent conviction that smoking is a sin? Even if he can't
see me?
Even if he doesn't even know I
exist? Not smoke, because someone thinks
his
convictions ought to be
my obligations?
I think much of
Galatians was written because of similar thinking.
Now, the last argument against smoking that I've heard from Christians is that it's poor
stewardship. And I agree that it might be. It is certainly possible to waste money on
tobacco and pipes. In fact, I have done it. But it doesn't follow that all money spent on
pipes and tobacco is wasted money, any more than it follows that having pot roast instead
of hamburger, or punch at Christmastime is wasted. To be wasted, the money would have to
not be productive of more of some kind of good than holding onto it would have been, and I
don't think that this can be said of a moderate use of tobacco. It is productive of solid
relaxation (and don't forget that even Christ and the apostles went aside to rest),
contemplation, and much solid thinking, and there is nothing wrong with any of those
things. You could even argue that, for some people, it's productive of health (this is
discussed elsewhere in this post).
Ultimately, I think anyone who makes the "poor stewardship" argument immediately lays
himself open to the charge of hypocrisy, for, rest assured, there is no one who spends his
money so perfectly that someone else will not think he wastes some of it, somewhere. If
you think my 24 ounces of tobacco per year is wasteful, please rest assured that I think
all those stinking Twinkies you eat are more so, and so on. Examples could be multiplied
easily.
The reality is that scripture simply doesn't give Christians hard-and-fast rules
about how to handle their money. It tells us to give generously, but doesn't give us a
specific amount (No, the tithe is not commanded for Christians). It tells us that he who
wastes is brother to him who destroys, but doesn't give us an exhaustive list of examples
of what "waste" is. It tells us to give as we are led by God, and to give cheerfully. It
tells us to work with our hands, so that we might have something to give to others. It
tells us to pay our just obligations, and to pay our taxes, and to care for our families,
and especially those of our own households.
But tell us not to smoke a little, on the grounds that the money could be better spent
elsewhere? It just doesn't say that, and I don't think anything it
does say can be
fairly stretched to imply it, and if it
did, it would effectively reduce every
Christian everywhere to rejecting expenditures on everything not strictly necessary to bare
subsistence. Since hardly anyone makes such an attempt, I can't help but think that the
reasoning of people who would prohibit smoking on such grounds is mighty darned selective.
It appears to be a variant of my favorite "weaker brother's" reasoning, given above, only
thusly: "
my ways of wasting money aren't nearly as bad as your ways
of wasting money. And therefore they're okay. Kind of. Can we stop talking about me now
and get back to you?
Let me sum up, and draw these rather jumbled thoughts together: Smoking is not said to be
a sin anywhere in scripture, no matter how much you might try to torture certain passages
to make it appear otherwise. It not only cannot legitimately be said to be "worldly," but
even to make the attempt to say it is reveals that a person doesn't really understand what
the Bible means by worldiness. In all my life, I don't think I've ever met anyone who
actually smoked against his conscience because I, or someone else, smoked. I do not think
that moderate smoking is necessarily poor stewardship. I do think that you should be
loving towards people, and that obviously you shouldn't smoke around people, especially
brothers and sisters in Christ, whom you are grievously upsetting by doing so.
But I also think that suggesting that people shouldn't smoke at all, even around people who
don't mind, or alone, on the grounds that some hypothetical brother somewhere might hear
about it and succumb to temptation, or that it upsets the pastor of the church next door,
even though he doesn't live on your block, is going way,
way beyond the text and any
reasonable interpretation thereof. I think that most people who think that smoking is a
sin don't think that because of what the Bible says, but because that's what they've heard
since they were kids and they've never bothered themselves to think much about it. I think
that some people who say that smoking is a sin say so because they haven't the slightest
desire to smoke, and it is therefore an easy "command" to obey, and to congratulate
themselves on obeying.
And worst of all, I think that some--an awful lot, really--of people who insist on yapping
at you about your smoking want nothing more than to be able to brag to someone, perhaps
even just themselves, that they got you to change your evil ways. They want to, as Paul
rather indelicately put it, "boast in your flesh." And I have about as much patience with
that sort of thing as Paul did.
The Image of the
Pipe Smoker/Why Might You Take Up Pipe Smoking?
I struggled a bit with this section. It is really kind of a messed-up assemblage of
thoughts I had over a period of weeks and will likely read that way.
Why talk about the image of the pipe smoker, how pipe smokers are perceived? It is because
I think we have general images--
archetypes is a word I do not like, as is
stereotypes, but they might give you an idea of the sort of thing I am talking
about--in our world for a
reason. They do not just show up in our culture, or at
least they do not
all just show up in our culture. They are not all foisted on us
by our mass media. More than a few of them reflect deep-seated attitudes, experience, and
feelings of the heart that cannot always successfully be put into words.
When you talk about the image of the pipe smoker, I think you gain some insight into what
sort of person might like smoking a pipe, and indeed, even into what effect smoking a pipe
might have on your personality. It might even give you some idea as to how you perceive
yourself, what ideas and habits and traits you identify with.
So many of my intellectual and literary heroes have been pipe smokers. Holmes, Gandalf,
Twain, Tolkien, Lewis, Denis Nayland Smith. Einstein was a pipe smoker. John Adams was a
pipe smoker.
Matsumura
Sokon was a pipe smoker.
Why is that, you think?
Again and again and again I have broached the subject of smoking with people, women
included, and have been simply stunned at the number of people who
despise
cigarettes, but have little or no problem with the idea of someone smoking a pipe around
them. Why is that, you think?
Picture a pipe smoker. You may
possibly picture some old gent from the hinterlands
smoking a corn cob (and corn cobs actually provide quite a decent smoke), but my bet is
that is not what you pictured. I would be willing to bet that you pictured a man, older,
not given to rushed thought, or, perhaps, some famous thinker or poet or philosopher, or a
theologian in his study, or perhaps just some graven and wise man. Maybe you pictured
Santa Claus, but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that you did not picture a
fool.
You pictured someone with at least gravity, maturity, and patience. You pictured a man who
thinks.
Not for nothing is this old Peterson Pipe advertisement iconic.
I would be willing to bet that even a large number of people who've never considered
smoking a pipe have seen it.
Few picture a fool smoking a pipe, and I do not think it is a coincidence. People who
insist on rushing through life often do not take well to a pipe, nor people who care to
live life unexamined.
A pipe smoker, as a rule, is not a dangerous man. Oh, he may be dangerous in the sense
that Doug MacArthur was dangerous, or that a professional soldier is dangerous. But he is
not a ruffian. No one sees a man smoking a pipe, any kind of pipe, and thinks to
themselves
I had better keep an eye on that guy.
Cigarette smokers can easily appear to be ruffians. Cigar smokers, perhaps. You can
easily picture a gangster smoking a stogie.
But a pipe smoker? A ruffian?
Never. Even Josef Stalin didn't
look like the murderous fiend he was when he
was smoking his pipe. It was that pipe in his mouth that allowed Americans to think of him
as "Uncle Joe," in spite of his bloodthirsty ways.
In smoking terms, the cigarette is the emblem of--at its best--the working stiff or the
military grunt, the hardworking average joe. At its worst, it is the emblem of the
uneducated lowlife. The cigar is the emblem, the image, of the businessman striving for,
or in possession of, success; it might evoke the general or the chief of state. The pipe,
on the other hand, is the emblem of the patient man, the intellectually-minded man, the
philosopher, the theologian, the
sage.
A
patient man. An
intelligent man, etc.
But pretty much always a man.
For the pipe and cigar smoker, far more so than for the cigarette smoker, the smoking world
is a male world. The tobacconist's shop is a masculine realm, not unlike the old-fashioned
barber shop. If it is decorated, and it often is, it is with masculine images: things
related to the military, to hunting, to fishing, to rough-and-tumble sports. It is not
that women are unwelcome there, but if you see one, you more or less take it for granted
she is picking up something for her husband or father. Nor do women seem to object to this
automatic mental classification.
I remember the time, during a break in machine shop class (Yes, I have done a
lot of
different things in my life), when I was smoking a pipe out in the courtyard, and a lady
asked for a light for her cigarette. She noted how much she admired the pipe, saying,
"It's such a masculine habit."
And she wasn't alone. Women often react very positively to a man smoking a pipe. They
often do not like cigarettes at all, and they may think cigars stink, but they will often
not only
put up with a pipe, but openly
admire it, even if the gentleman
smoking it is smoking an English mixture that smells not at all like cherries or plums or
chocolate (If you want a sweeter-smelling pipe tobacco, I have heard that
Bob's Chocolate Flake is very good. And
Lane
Limited's 1Q is probably the best-selling aromatic tobacco sold in pipe shops.).
Women--at least a lot of women--like masculine men. I have discussed this with female
friends and acquaintances. It is not as though such women want to be made to feel
helpless, like distressed damsels in the presence of knights in shining armor, but they
definitely appreciate differences between the sexes, not just physical differences, but
differences in interests, in attitudes, in bearing and habits. They appreciate them and
they expect them, and they are often bitterly disappointed in what sometimes seems a
relentlessly politically-correct drive toward a unisex world.
When such women see a man smoking a pipe, they may perceive a
gentle and
thoughtful man, but very definitely a
man, nonetheless. They like it, and
are often not shy about telling you so.
I do not mean to imply that pipe smoking
by its nature is naturally a male activity,
just that many, perhaps most, people see it that way. There are, of course, women pipe
smokers. There is at least one active on
Christian Pipesmokers. My own great-
grandmother was one, from what I'm told. Curiously, it seems to me that of the women pipe
smokers you run across (none save the one on Christian Pipesmokers mentioned just now are
actually coming to mind, I have to admit, which ought to tell you something), most seem
acutely
feminine in spite of the pipe. I think that in addition to enjoying the
pipe, they enjoy being around men who smoke pipes--again, because they like
men. I
am not saying they
lust after them, mind you--just that they
like them and
appreciate them.
If you take up a pipe, don't be surprised if the women in your life react a little
differently to you. And if you are a woman contemplating taking up the pipe, please don't
be discouraged by my commentary. It'll be okay.
In closing this section, let me note that I have often thought that when people pick up the
pipe and then drop it, it is because their personalities are all wrong for it, and they do
not want to change. People have self-images and will consistently act in accordance with
them. If you are contemplating taking up the pipe and this material just seems alien to
how you think of yourself, I'd think some more. Pipe smoking may not be for you.
What Kind of Tobacco Should You Try?
Whilst I was preparing this post, someone asked me to recommend a couple of tobaccos, as he
was interested in trying a pipe. The thing is, pipe tobaccos have an enormous variety,
resulting from different strains of the leaf being grown in different parts of the world,
under different conditions. How the tobacco is cured makes a difference. How it is cut
makes a difference. How it is handled makes a difference. It may have casings (flavoring
sauces) applied, or top dressings (something added chiefly for the sake of aroma). It may
even be cooked!
And then you start blending any or all of the above...
I don't know what kind of tobacco you should try because I don't know what kind of palate
you have. Think about the kinds of things you like to smell: Hickory smoke? Cake baking?
Perfume? What do you like to taste? Coffee? Sweetened or the way God intended? With
cream, or the way God intended? Fruit? Beer or wine? Chocolate? If you can answer
questions like that, and you can talk to someone who's tried a wide variety of tobaccos, I
think you stand a much better chance of getting hold of a tobacco you like. What I would
suggest to start with--and here, your local tobacconist is invaluable--is going down to the
tobacco shop and picking up an ounce each of his most popular aromatic and "English"
blends, and adjust from there.
Think about it carefully. You will want to try several
blends and maybe even go the length of taking notes. Tasting smoke is not unlike tasting
wine. The flavor is considerably more complex than any non-smoker will ever give it credit
for. If you peruse the internet for a while, or buy a book on pipes and pipe tobaccos, you
will rapidly become acquainted with the different types of tobaccos--burleys, virginias,
turkish, latakia, perique, flakes, plugs, and so forth--and taking notes will help you
learn what you like.
If you peruse the internet looking for guides to pipe tobaccos, it
ain't
like you can't find them.
Personally, I tend to like what are often called "balkan" blends, uncased blends heavy on
latakia and turkish tobaccos, with a little virginia and/or perique, and Cornell & Diehl's
Star of the East is one of my favorites. I also like virginia flakes
or plugs with a bit of perique, the classic
Escudo being, in my opinion, pure tobacco gold. Lately I've been
smoking a lot of Stokkebye's
Luxury Navy Flake.
You may think these are
awful. You may be much better off with
Bob's Chocolate Flake.
Unfortunately, Escudo only comes in 50-gram tins and tends toward the pricey, so I am very
much open to the possibility of finding a bulk tobacco much like it--and I'm told
Anniversary Kake may fit the
description.
And all of that brings up the questions of tinned vs. "bulk" tobaccos and
local tobacconists vs. online tobacco retailers.
What's the difference? As regards the tinned vs. bulk tobaccos, as far as I can tell,
mostly the tin. Until you open the tin, the tobacco within is going to remain okay for
only God knows how long. With bulk tobaccos, you need to go to some minimal effort to make
sure they don't dry out. Other than that, I really don't see that tinned tobaccos are any
better in
quality than bulk tobaccos. The difference in price--and tinned tobaccos
do seem generally to be a bit pricier--seems to reflect the cost of tinning the stuff.
Some might disagree. At least one person I've read suggested that the stuff in the tins
has aged longer. Maybe it has. I don't know. But if that's the problem, you can solve it
by aging what you want in your own air-tight jars.
Bulk tobaccos are often available much cheaper in quantity. You might find that one ounce
of a favorite blend is four bucks, but only 1.83 per ounce--if you buy sixteen ounces! I
am speaking of online retailers here--you might find that your local tobacconist will make
you the same sort of deal, and you wouldn't have to worry about shipping costs, just sales
tax. You don't know 'til you ask.
Some bulk blends--
Full Virginia Flake comes to mind--seem to
have acquired almost legendary status. I don't see that they take a back seat to tinned
blends at all, and if you find one that you like, there seems no reason at all not to buy a
pound of it and seal it up tight.
Now: about the local tobacconist.
I like him. More than that, I am profoundly grateful for him. In a way, the local
tobacconist is a cultural icon.
But I think he is going to have a very, very hard time competing with the online retailers,
at least with established pipe smokers. You can just find so very many more blends online,
service is
very good, and prices are noticeably lower than brick-and-mortar
establishments. Same thing with pipes--you can just find so very much more online, and
there is a definite difference in price point.
On the other hand, it's a little bit harder for Aunt Gertrude to go online shopping for a
new pipe for her favorite nephew, and the local guy behind the counter can be a valuable
reference, especially for the beginner. And often, very often, you can try a pipeful of a
new blend for free before you go buying several ounces of the stuff. Try doing
that
online.
The Massive Resource that is YouTube
When I was last a pipe smoker, I was pretty much unaware of YouTube (Was it even around
eleven years ago?), but for last two or three years, I have been telling people that you
can learn almost anything you want to learn on YouTube. I have found and used videos on
how to replace the water pump on our Dodge Caravan, videos on carburetor rebuilding, and so
forth.
So, soon after I resumed pipe smoking, I started hunting for pipe smoking videos
and, sure enough, I found them. Some of them were useful--well, shoot, I suppose
all of them would prove useful to
someone.
And there were some things that intrigued me about them. One or two of them were a little
disturbing.
One thing that was interesting was how people approached restoring or refurbishing "estate"
pipes, that is, pipes that have been used. You can find used pipes all over
E-Bay; you can also sometimes
buy them at estate sales. I bought a few myself, back when I smoked pipes before.
I must digress a moment to note that estate pipes can run the gamut in terms of how much
they have been used. As I recall, the ones that I bought--including a Peterson "System"
pipe and a Dunhill--seemed barely to have been used. This shouldn't be too surprising, I
suppose. I wonder how many people try to quit smoking cigarettes via taking up a pipe,
only to find that they haven't, and don't care to develop, the temperament necessary to
really enjoy pipe smoking. When they finally have to make the choice between the quick
nicotine hit from a hastily-smoked cigarette and smoking a pipe, which demands
some
attention, however little, they abandon the pipe and go back to the cigarettes. And there
are the people who've been bought pipes by well-meaning wives and relatives trying to wean
them off cigarettes.
Some of them have apparently been pretty heavily used, and have absorbed--at least in the
carbon build-up--"cake"--in the bowl, a lot of the oils and tars and stuff peculiar to the
tobacco that's been smoked in it. I get the impression that some folks think this stuff
actually gets into the
wood, and I'm not prepared to rule it out, even though it
seems like it would be difficult to me. People have developed quite an art to getting this
gunk out of the old pipes and making the old stems shine again, and, since I have been
buying my pipes via E-Bay, I was glad to get some tips, just in case some of the pipes I
buy
have been really heavily used.
On the other hand, I kind of got the impression from some of these folks that--how should I
put this?--they didn't really have any interests in life
except for pipes. Not all
of them were like that. At least one of them mentioned that he did a lot of swimming and
kayaking. Still, I almost wondered about some of them. No doubt my impression was skewed
by the fact that they
were, after all, in the middle of doing videos on the subject,
but I really began to think that pipe smoking was
it for some of them. The fact
that only
one of them (the kayaker) looked reasonably fit did nothing to dispel that
impression. They were all, with that one exception, thick (or more than a little thick)
around the middle or young and (bluntly) scrawny and soft-looking.
To me, this is weird. I realize that you could get the impression from this post that
pipes and tobacco are all that's on my mind, but you have to take a few things into
account. I haven't really looked at the subject in eleven years, I'm trying to acquire, at
rock-bottom prices, a handful of pipes that will satisfy me for decades (and have spent a
lot of time "shopping," via the internet), there's YOUTUBE, etc., and I wrote this post
over a period of weeks and am trying, basically, to make it a one-stop to which I can refer
people whenever they ask--okay, the likelihood is no one will
ever ask, I admit
it--what I think about pipes. The time is going to come, and shortly, when I'm basically
just going to carry a pipe and tobacco around with me and smoke a half-bowl here and a
quarter-bowl there when I get the chance, and a pipeful in the evening, and pipe smoking is
going to be an
adjunct and
enhancement to the rest of my life, a
blessing to be enjoyed, one of
many, and not an all-consuming obsession. It
sure as heck isn't going to make me give up...
Bible study
Prayer
Church
My basic exercise routine (calisthenics M-W-F and running T-Th-Sat)
RyuTe (an extraordinary variety of Okinawan karate, if
you don't want to follow the link)
Reading
Following politics
Listening to the Cardinals
Harassing my children
Cooking
Eating decently
Gardening
Maybe I can put some of this succinctly by saying that while I'm
impressed with the appearance of "new" that can be given to old pipes, and with the depth
of knowledge that people acquire regarding pipes and tobaccos, I find myself flabbergasted
that some people have invested--as far as I can tell--in multiple buffing wheels, four
grades of sandpaper, three grades of buffing compounds, waxes, etc., for the--again, as far
as I can tell--sole purpose of restoring old pipes. I mean,
jiminy, how many times
are you going to
do this? How many pipes can you
smoke?
To get back to the physical condition of some of these folks, I noted that one guy--Middle
Eastern by looks and accent, from Turkey, perhaps?--who was obviously a researcher or
biologist or something--talked about health and smoking and gave some perfectly good and
reasonable advice. Yet I couldn't help but think, "Most of the guys doing these videos are
fairly
obviously not getting any significant exercise and God knows I wouldn't
hazard a bet that their diets are decent;
there's the biggest part of your problem."
I also noted, with some amusement, that he was doing a video on health and smoking, but
noted in passing that from his childhood, it seemed like all of his relatives smoked
something--cigarettes, cigars, or pipes--and seemed to live just
forever.
Look, there's a
lot of things that influence whether or not a given person gets
cancer or heart disease, and so forth. I have talked about some of them elsewhere in this
post. The only thing I wish to point out here is that it seems
ludicrous to talk of
how moderate pipe smoking isn't all that big a risk to your health when you are combining
that small risk with a more-or-less complete failure to take care of your body in
other respects. The human body is a marvelous mechanism and able to deal with a lot of
pressure, so to speak, but how can it be a good idea to eat garbage and stay motionless and
get fat and flabby (or spindly and flabby) and then top that off with several pipefuls of
tobacco every day?
Still, if there's something about pipe-smoking you want to learn, I say that YouTube is the
way to go. If someone hasn't put up a video about it, you probably don't need to learn
it.
Kinds of Pipes I Have Owned, What I Remember
About Them, and What I've Learned
Jobey churchwarden: The
Jobeys were decent pipes, American-made, if I recall correctly, of decent
briar. Nothing spectacular, but then, they didn't charge a spectacular price, either.
Decent-looking, decent-smoking pipes at reasonable prices. I think I had two or three
Jobeys at one point, of which the churchwarden was the first. To this day, I wouldn't
hesitate to recommend that someone looking for something like that to check out Jobeys on
E-Bay. About the churchwarden specifically, let me just say, first, that it seems to me
that just about everyone taking up the pipe picks up a churchwarden fairly early on. I
know I did. I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it's that they read, or hear, that the
length of the stem allows the smoke to cool down a bit by the time it hits your mouth.
Perhaps it's the image, the I'm-sitting-in-the-rocking-chair-reading-the-classics-with-my-
old-fashioned-looking-pipe image. I don't know. What I do recall is that the smoke, if it
cooled, didn't cool enough to make any appreciable difference, and due to the length of the
stem, as you smoke the pipe, the bowl of the pipe is
rarely level; the result is
that the tobacco tended to burn most, and hottest, on the side of the bowl closest to the
smoker. You have to pay attention not to get an uneven burn. Perhaps a long
bent
stem would fix this problem, but I haven't looked at enough churchwardens to say how common
such a thing is.
I won't buy another churchwarden. It's not that they're
bad pipes, it's that they
don't suit
me. My experience is that a decent blend of tobacco, decently packed
into a decent, clean, broken-in pipe, will smoke just fine and you won't find yourself even
slightly concerned with cooling it off anyway.
Ropp Cherrywood: One of the things you will hear, or read, soon after getting into
pipes is that a cherrywood pipe will, as the pipe warms, actually give off just the mildest
aroma of cherry, or at least a little sweetness in the air.
I never noticed it. That may just be me. In any event, I won't be buying another
cherrywood. If you're interested, last I heard, Ropp was the name brand in the field.
An allegedly repaired Dunhill poker: This was a used pipe I bought on E-Bay. You
see, you can't go on the internet pipe forums for long without being convinced that
eventually, you
must try a Dunhill.
New Dunhill pipes sell at prices that reflect either extraordinary smoking qualities and
appearance or massive brand infatuation. The briar is oil-cured, as opposed to the air-
cured briar most other makers use. Dunhill will not sell (at least under the Dunhill name)
a pipe that has a less than superlative finish. The stems are hand-cut from vulcanite
stock. You can quite easily pay five hundred simoleons for one, and it's not at all
uncommon to see used ones go for two hundred, or even more, on E-Bay. I bought mine at a
low price, it having been, according to the description, repaired somewhere in the shank.
I never noticed a seam or anything that would indicate where the repair was, and part of me
wonders if the thing had ever been broken.
How did it look? It was quite an attractive pipe. How did it smoke? Just fine--but to
be honest, I was quite unable to distinguish any significant difference between the "oil-
cured" Dunhill briar and any of my other pipes.
In short, if you are able to tell a difference and have the money, sure, buy Dunhills (but
if you're that sort of smoker, you're probably not reading this blogpost anyway, are you?).
Or, if you can get one on E-Bay at a low price, by all means, buy it. It does happen
occasionally. But my bet is that most folks will not be able to tell a difference that
justifies the expense of a new Dunhill, or even a used one. I will certainly never buy
another, not unless I can get it for a song.
Now, for what it's worth, Dunhill, like every other major maker, cannot sell every piece of
briar that it handles under its flagship name. Some pieces of briar reveal flaws in the
wood as it gets worked. If the flaw doesn't positively ruin the pipe, that pipe winds up
being marketed under some other name. According to what I've read online,
Dunhill says
they don't do this, but again, according to the best of my limited internet research,
the pipes sold under the name
James Barber B-Line are Dunhill seconds. The stems, according to what I've
read, are not hand-cut (do you care?), but, again, according to what I've read, they
smoke just like Dunhills and at a fraction of the cost. I
do know that they
sure
look like Dunhills, shape-and-finish-wise. I may well eventually pick one of
these up. It's not a priority. I don't need that many pipes, you know? And the fact that
you have to order them from England and pay for shipping and VAT complicates things a bit.
Still--even with shipping and the VAT, they come out a little less than an entry-level
Peterson...
Some will also tell you that
Parker pipes are Dunhill seconds. About that, I don't know. The
Pipedia.org article tells you that Parker was
started by Dunhill partly as a way to
market "failed" Dunhills, but that over time, they grew into two separate lines and the
Parkers,
though made in the same factory as Dunhills, don't get all the special
little treatments the Dunhills get and really can't be considered Dunhill seconds.
You can speculate all you like, but I guess until you visit the Dunhill/Parker factory, you
just don't know. I
suspect that the factory has two separate streams of briar, with
one being set aside for Dunhill's oil-curing process and the other probably air-cured, like
the vast majority of manufacturers. I also
suspect that the machinery used on both
lines of pipes is substantially the same, and I
suspect that the engineering would
be substantially the same, with the result, on the whole, being that I
suspect a
Parker is basically an air-cured Dunhill with a lower-grade finish. Is it telling that one
article said that the Parkers were often referred to as "working man's Dunhills"?
But I don't
know any of this. What I
know is that if you poke around the web
looking for information on Parker pipes, you will find plenty of people saying that they
have one or two and that they smoke pretty well, some even saying they smoke as well as
their Dunhills. And I
know that as of this writing, I have a used one coming via
E-Bay (all the way from Greece, if you can believe that!) and I will soon know for myself.
One thing I'm being increasingly convinced of via my internet investigations: there have
been a
lot of pipe manufacturers either
in England or
doing business
in England, and some of them have been bought and sold enough times that, except for
Dunhill and Ashton, it can be hard to keep track of who's made pipes of what quality and
when. But,
that having been said, you can go to E-Bay and find
lots of
perfectly good English-made smokers at very reasonable prices. No, they're not all
Dunhills, but, as I mentioned when talking about the Dunhill I used to have, it just didn't
seem, apart from the finish, all that different from my other briar pipes anyway. Look for
the Parkers, the Comoy's, the GBDs, the Barlings, the Ben Wades, the Charatans, and so
forth. There's a very good chance that they will suit you just fine.
a Comoy's full bent: I don't remember a whole lot about this pipe. I have the
vaguest recollection that I was sometimes a bit aggravated with it, but for the life of me,
I can't remember why.
a Peterson rhodesian: This was my first Peterson. I bought it, frankly, not so much
for Peterson's reputation as good-smoking pipes as because they are made in Ireland, and,
being largely of Scots-Irish ancestry (with, I'm told, just a dab of Choctaw), I have
something of an interest in things Irish. It was a fine smoker, and I wouldn't hesitate to
buy one again. As a matter of fact, it was one of my four best smokers.
a Peterson "system": I bought this one--or, more accurately, I bought the
bowl--on E-Bay for a pittance, figuring I could get Ted's Pipe Shop to get me a
stem, which they did, although I don't recall them being terribly excited about it. The
Peterson System is, in some ways, legendary in the pipe world, and I recommend
you read about it. I really question whether you are going to get a better smoke from any
other pipe. Perhaps--but I wonder. The way the thing is built pretty much guarantees that
you are going to get a nice, dry smoke. If you smoke English-style blends, this may not be
such an issue; they tend, in my experience, to smoke fairly dry anyway, and unless you
smoke a lot, I don't know that you need to concern yourself much with how "wet" they smoke,
but aromatics are a different matter. With the various flavorings and additives in
aromatics, a lot of moisture can be released as the tobacco burns, and you may well wish
for something like the Peterson System if you don't have one.
It was a really fine-smoking pipe,one of my four favorites.
a Peterson bent bulldog: The memory of this pipe just stabs me to the heart; it was
a gift from my parents, and after careful break-in, was one of my two best smokers, too. I
loved that pipe and can hardly wait to get another one, when I can find one on E-Bay at a
price I want to pay.
By now, you've noticed that I've talked about three Peterson pipes in a row, and all three
of them were among my four favorite smokers. Right now, I do not have any Petersons.
Right now, I have two
"Irish
Seconds", a Savinelli, a Barling, and a Parker on the way. They are pretty good. I
don't anticipate getting rid of
any of them. But over the next couple of years, I
will augment those four with a few Petersons, partly because I like the p-lip stems, partly
because I like the way Petersons smoke, and partly because...well...I like Irish stuff...
a Bari: This was a Danish pipe. Shaped somewhat like an egg. It was okay, I
suppose. Just another briar pipe. I don't remember anything special about it.
a Preben Holm: Time was, when the mania was for "freehand" pipes, pipes not carved
according to more traditional shapes, but...well...kind of just where the pipe carvers
imagination took him, that Preben Holm was one of the popular brands. Thought I
had
to have one.
I had it for years, never really smoked it all that much. Frankly, it was just awkward.
Pretty to look at, but awkward.
As I've aged, I've gradually turned into a thoroughgoing traditionalist in most ways, and
my taste in pipes is no exception. It's one of the reasons I like Petersons, as a matter
of fact: they make more-or-less traditional shapes, smacking, in some cases, of a Sherlock
Holmes-ian or Mark Twain-ian or vaguely Celtic sensibility.
two meerschaums: You will, of course, be told that meerschaums provide an
excellent, and, due to the natural porosity of the material, dry smoke. You will be told
that they need no breaking in. You will be told that, treated carefully, the pipe will
gradually "color," as the tars and such from the tobacco permeate the meerschaum.
Well, it's true that they need no breaking in, at least to speak of, and yes, the pipe will
color, if you smoke it enough, which I didn't. I didn't smoke either one of them all that
much because they just weren't all that good. I had one, a Barling, that was already
black, I guess because they had made it so at the factory. It was okay. I had another, a
"normal" meerschaum, carved in the figure of some middle-eastern potentate's crowned head.
I about halfway suspect that with meerschaum pipes, the carver is more concerned with how
cool-looking a pipe he can make than about how it smokes. Also, it has to be noted that
meerschaum breaks without much effort, and the
cognoscenti tell me not to handle the
bowl with a bare hand, at least while it's warm, so you might actually need to wear a
glove while you're smoking the thing. Essentially, I'm saying that I suspect the
meerschaum is a novelty item that you can safely ignore, but there are people that really
like them. Each to his own.
a calabash: Now, a calabash, on the other hand... If you don't know, a calabash is
the pipe people often think of when thinking of Sherlock Holmes, though he is never
recorded in any of the stories as having smoked one. It is made of a yellowish gourd, with
a meerschaum (usually) bowl inserted and a pipestem at the other end. The resulting air
chamber beneath the bowl is
enormous, and if you want a cool smoke without the
flavor loss associated with a water pipe, I'm not sure you could do better. On the other
hand, they are usually a bulky, somewhat fragile pain in the butt to handle, and if you get
one, in my opinion, it is an armchair-only pipe. If that's what you want, though, it's
hard to knock them.
a water pipe: People buy these, I suppose, because the smoke, going through the
water, is cooled off to a remarkable degree. It is also rendered flavorless to a
remarkable degree. Some folks try to remedy this by adding, say, wine to the water. In my
opinion, it would be a waste of wine. I would never buy another one of these.
a Bonacquisti poker: At the time, about twelve or so years ago, I think, I actually
had 175 bucks (as I recall) to spend on this pipe. His prices have gone up, naturally,
over the years, and I think you will have a pretty hard time finding anything on his site
for less than 350 bucks. Having said all that, it was a superb smoker, with the most
incredible sandblasted finish I have ever seen on any pipe. This is one of the pipes that I
could kick myself for having thrown away. If I could afford it, I wouldn't hesitate to buy
another Bonacquisti.
a sandblasted Brebbia, almost like an Oom Paul: I really don't remember anything
remarkable about this pipe. It had an enormous bowl, and I rarely smoked it.
an actual Oom Paul, no-name, I think: Another one I rarely smoked.
various "wall" pipes: "Wall" pipes are the no-name pipes that tobacco shops
typically display affixed to the wall, rather than in the glass cases. Almost without
exception, they are briar. I expect that most of them are rejected "stummels" (the not-
quite-finished, machine-carved briar that eventually becomes the bowl and shank of a pipe)
from well-known manufacturers, either sold to lesser-known manufacturers or finished at the
big factory and labeled differently. They are often not bad, at least for the price.
Stems tend to be a bit cheaper and of lower quality. Still, they are nothing to be sneezed
at. They are certainly better than the Dr. Grabow-type pipes you would get at the
drugstore. If you want to try a pipe but are not certain and don't want to spend a deal of
money, these are not a bad option.
a corncob: Corncobs, sometimes referred to as "Missouri Meerschaums," are probably
the most remarkable "deal" in the pipe world. In my opinion, they actually provide quite a
decent little smoke, and they are, at this writing, available for seven bucks or less. I
wouldn't hesitate to recommend one for anyone wanting to try out a pipe without breaking
the bank. They require little, if any, breaking in. Some folks say they can taste a
little corn-sweetness as they smoke one. I've never noticed it.
If there's a drawback to the things, it's that the construction is
so cheap--hey,
what do you expect for seven bucks?--that I have a hard time seeing how one could remain in
regular use for more than a few months. Maybe you could get a year out of it? Maybe? This
is compounded by the stem and shank being of cheap material that takes a little extra work
to clean thoroughly. Also, as part of the overall cheapness of the things, you get a stem
that is narrow to the point of being difficult to grip with your teeth. And, of course,
anyone who sees you smoking one will immediately mock the dickens out of you for looking
like Farmer Brown, and wonder why you aren't wearing your overalls.
Still, truthfully,
they're not a bad option. Years ago, there was a regular poster
on one of the pipe smokers' newsgroups that smoked them as often as he smoked anything
else. Oh, he smoked high-falutin'
Dunhill tobaccos in 'em, but he smoked
corncobs...
two "Irish Seconds," one full bent, one straight apple: These are, basically,
Petersons that weren't good enough to wear the "Peterson" label. You see, briar grows in
tough conditions, and sometimes, say, when sanding, the maker will uncover a flaw in the
briar that makes it unsalable, at least under his major label. At that point, he may may
see if he can sell the stummel to another maker, or he can finish the pipe and sell it
under another label. In Peterson's case, one of the labels is--or used to be, I am not
sure they use it anymore--"Irish Seconds." If my experience with two pipes is any
indication, Irish Seconds smoke pretty much like Petersons and the only drawback I can see
is that none of the ones I've seen for sale on E-Bay has the famous Peterson "p-lip" stem,
which is, in my opinion, a desirable feature.
If you don't care about the "p-lip" stem, dollar for dollar, I'm not sure you could do
better than buying Irish Seconds pipes on E-Bay. They may not be the most attractive of
pipes, as they will likely have a pit here and there in the finish, but they should
smoke just fine, and you shouldn't have to pay through the nose for them. I got one
of the two I have for 20.50 and the other for 17.50, shipping included. Considering that a
new Peterson is likely to cost you
at least 85.00, taking shipping into account, and
that people seem absurdly willing to overpay for old Petes on E-Bay, so that if you get a
Pete there for less than 40 or 50 bucks, you have probably done well...well, the Irish
Seconds start to look mighty attractive. Of course, any time you buy "estate," or used,
pipes, you will probably have some clean-up to do. How much depends on how persnickety you
are and what condition the pipe was in when it arrived.
a Savinelli sandblasted "Prince of Wales": This was actually one of the first pipes
I ever got. I didn't really learn how to smoke it for years. The bowl of a Prince of
Wales is not as deep as some pipes, and, if this one was any indication, it's easy to pack
it in such a way that it burns hot. Eventually I learned how to pack it better.
a sandblasted Savinelli billiard: I'm not sure what happened to this pipe. I
remember it being very attractive and nice to smoke, but I think I broke the stem on it and
I'm not sure whether I ever replaced it. A pity.
a sandblasted or rusticated (it's hard to tell sometimes!) Savinelli poker: This was
an E-Bay buy. I always liked pokers, and I always liked sandblasted pipes. This one
looked good, except for the stem, which needed cleaning, and I managed to get it for what,
for any decent Savinelli, was a remarkably low price. Believe me, I wish I had that kind
of luck every time I bid on something. Most of the time, I lose the auction because I'm
not willing to pay through the nose for a used item.
Savinelli makes a
lot of pipes, running the gamut from "wall" pipes to their
"autograph" pipes, which are often very beautiful; I had the opportunity to, shall we say,
"guest-smoke" an autograph once, many years ago. It was a beautiful-smoking pipe, simply
lovely, and if you like the styling, I wouldn't have any hesitation in recommending the
autograph line to you. But the other Savinelli lines, in my experience, smoke pretty well,
too, and you may well be able to pick up half a dozen perfectly decent Savinellis for your
collection for under two hundred bucks--maybe
well under two hundred bucks. For what
it's worth, I'm told that pipes marked "Estella" are autograph seconds.
a sandblasted Barling bulldog: This was another E-Bay buy. The pictures looked
beautiful; I like sandblasted pipes, and I like bulldogs and bent bulldogs. And I was
mildly intrigued: if you look at
the history of Barling pipes, they were
once considered among the finest pipes made. Then the company was sold, and their
reputation took a sharp plunge for a while, and, as far as I can tell, they have been
gradually climbing back up the "quality pipe" ladder for some little time. If this pipe is
any indication, they are now solidly in the ranks of decent, if not spectacular, pipes. I
like the sandblasting on this pipe. I like the grain. It is
very light. The stem
is made of something other than vulcanite and I don't like it as much as I would a
vulcanite stem, but it's okay. It smoked Star of the East very nicely, and virginia flake
pretty well, but didn't do so hot with "Cairo," which seems to me to smoke a bit hot in
some pipes. Remarkably, I was the only bidder and got it for a song.
a clay pipe: This was one of those little white clay pipes that used to be produced
by the bajillions in England. So cheap back then that you could smoke them for a little
while and then toss them in the fireplace. They actually provide a tolerable smoke, but
the bowl is nuclear-hot to the touch. At least mine was. If you feel compelled to get
one, mount on the wall as a decoration.
THE UPSHOT FROM MY EXPERIENCE AND IN MY OPINION: If you're a beginning pipe smoker,
this is what you wanted to know, right? Well, here it is:
Briar rules. It provides a good smoke and makes a durable pipe and is often beautiful to
look at. It is not too heavy. Like all other woods, it comes in various grades, with the
cheapest, as far as I can tell, winding up in Dr. Grabow-type drugstore pipes. It does
seem to me that you rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns, in that I don't know that
the briar used in, say, a hundred-dollar Peterson is
that much better than the briar
in a fifty-dollar "wall" pipe and I would
certainly question whether the briar in a
500-dollar Dunhill is
that much better than the briar in a 100-dollar Peterson. God
knows I would rate
any of the Petersons I used to own more highly than the one
Dunhill I had, at least in terms of smoking quality.
I really do think that a lot of the
cost of the very high-grade pipes comes down to how pretty the grain and the finish are,
and also to brand infatuation.
Engineering is probably the single most important factor in how a pipe smokes. The
relationship of the bore-hole through the pipe stem and shank to the bowl, and so forth.
This is not to say that there is necessarily a "best" engineering scenario, though I have
seen at least one guy on YouTube swear up and down that having a big bore-hole made all the
difference in the world. If you're interested, he noted that
Ser Jacopo
pipes were noted for big bore-holes.
Personally, I expect that due to small differences in
the way people pack and puff on their pipes, and differences in tobacco preference, and so
forth, some brands will suit some smokers and other brands will suit other smokers. So you
could easily say that it's
engineering and technique, really, that are the most
important factors in how a pipe smokes.
Let me reiterate that: in my opinion,
engineering and technique are the most
important factors in your smoke.
I don't give a rip how much you pay for a pipe, what the
quality of the briar is, and so forth, if you can't pack a pipe for beans, you're not going
to get a good smoke. If the pipe is made of decent briar, not the really soft stuff they
seem to use for Dr. Grabow-type drugstore pipes, and the holes are drilled right, it should
at least smoke half-way decently.
I am dead certain that there are sloppy, inattentive smokers out there getting crappy
smokes from their five-hundred-dollar Ashtons and Dunhills (though they might never admit
to it!), and I am dead certain that there are plenty of folks who are, right now, parlaying
good tobacco, attentive packing and puffing, and a none-too-expensive Barling pipe into a
satisfying smoke.
Folks like me.
If you want a cheap pipe, for whatever reason, and God knows I don't blame you, money is
tight in the Man of the West household, too, I don't think you can do better than a
corncob. Buy a pair and don't be ashamed of them.
For most people, I think churchwardens, meerschaums, calabashes, water pipes, and so on,
are wastes of money.
Sandblasted and rusticated pipes are sometimes said to smoke a little cooler, due to the
increased surface area, but if it really makes a difference, I haven't noticed it. I like
sandblasts, though. I think they look
cool. The deeper, the better. Paul
Bonacquisti makes some of the most amazing sandblasts I've ever seen. A lot of the
sandblasted Ashtons are like that, too. But for those, you will pay. Boy
howdy,
will you pay...
Some folks have certain pipes dedicated to certain tobaccos. I don't go that far, except
that I try to keep my smaller-bowled pipes for flakes. This is for no reason other than
that the flakes tend to smoke longer/burn slower than the balkan mixtures, and I don't
often have ninety minutes to sit out on the porch with a big pipe full of Virginia
flake.
Tobacco Storage
Short-term tobacco storage--and by "short-term," I mean, basically, less than a year--is
easy enough, at least here in Northeastern Oklahoma. I suppose it may be more of an issue
in some parts of the country with dramatically different weather--hotter, colder, wetter,
dryer, whatever. But here, it is no problem. I had a half-pound of tobacco in a perfectly
ordinary humidor at one point, and just moistened the little clay disk in the lid every so
often, and I had no trouble with the tobacco for the longest time. I can't remember
whether or not I ever smoked all of that particular blend up, but the point is, the tobacco
was okay. It didn't mold, it didn't dry out.
I am pretty sure that you could keep relatively small amounts of different tobaccos in used
food jars, maybe with a humidifier disk--these are available from tobacconists for a
pittance--in them, and they would do every bit as good a job as a humidor. If you don't
want your tobacco to taste a bit like peanut butter (maybe you
do, for all I know),
I would suggest scrubbing the jar and lid out thoroughly, and throwing some baking soda in
there while they're still wet, and shaking the whole assemblage up and down to coat the
inner surfaces. Let it sit for a day and then rinse the baking soda out, and let the thing
air dry, and I am pretty sure any food odors will vanish along with the baking soda.
Right now, I have some "Luxury Navy Flake" sitting in such a peanut-butter jar, with some
plumber's teflon tape around the threads. It's air-tight, believe me. I also have some
half-pint mason jars in which I'm keeping some "Cairo," some "Star of the East," some kind
of McClelland virginia flake, and some "Dubliner" from the local tobacconist.
Long-term storage--storing your tobacco for years to come--is more of an issue, one that I
am sure would have been considered absurd to even bring up, save by the most fanatical of
smokers, up until relatively recently. Why keep tobacco for years and years and years?
People who have done it will tell you that tobacco continues to improve as it ages, and I
have no doubt they are right, but still--why do it, when you can always pop down to your
tobacconist, like you and your ancestors have done for a few hundred years? Or when you
can always order what you want online?
I hate to say it, but the only appropriate response in this day and age is:
can you
ask?
Tobacco has, over the last fifty years or so, become a demonized product. Never--at least
so far--demonized to the point of being
outlawed, but sufficiently demonized that it
is one of the few products for which almost any absurd tax and regulation will not be
seriously fought.
Nobody in any legislature, save, perhaps, in tobacco-producing
states, wants to be seen as being on the side of
tobacco. I honestly think you will
be taken more seriously if you propose legalizing
marijuana than if you suggest that
tobacco is already taxed and regulated enough.
Cigarettes have been heavily taxed for years. Some people therefore took to roll-your-own
shops, where you could buy cigarette tobacco in bulk, and papers, and use the store's
rolling machines, and roll your own more cheaply. Recent legislation has put these shops
out of business--whether by directly outlawing them or by taxing bulk cigarette tobacco to
the point where there were no more savings to be had by rolling your own, I don't recall.
But you can rest assured that the
goal was to force people to buy heavily-taxed
cigarettes. I would suggest to you that government cares not at all whether or not people
quit smoking. What government cares about, what it
always cares about, is
revenue (which finances the purchase of
power), and the theory seems to be
that if you can demonize tobacco but
not outlaw it, you can tax it at absurd levels
and tobacco users will pay the tax and have no recourse at the polls, being, now, a
significant minority and consumers of a product that is said to be wrecking the health of
everyone in the country and that of their dogs, too.
At any rate, soon after this--the destruction of the roll-your-own cigarette shops--took
place,
pipe tobacco sales went through the roof. Apparently people realized they
could buy lower-taxed pipe tobacco and roll cigarettes out of them. Also, some of the
cigarette-tobacco manufacturers just re-labeled their product "pipe tobacco."
How long do you think it will be before they start taxing the mess out of pipe tobacco?
Remember, the
goal here is
revenue. They will almost certainly do whatever
is necessary to steer people toward highly-taxed products--or just tax the mess out of
everything.
I have even heard that bans on internet sales to individuals have been suggested.
That extraordinary levels of taxation and bans of any sort will only create a black market
is lost on people in government.
So now, please believe me, long-term storage of pipe
tobacco has become an
issue. You can find videos--and not a few--on YouTube on
"cellaring tobacco."
Some people seem to have more experience with this than others, and God knows I haven't
any. But the consensus seems to be that the main thing is to make whatever
container you store your tobacco in
air-tight. One person stated a concern that the
aromatic tobacco he was storing not turn into "particle-board" over the years, so he wasn't
packing it into jars too tightly. Nobody seemed to have that concern with "English"-style
tobaccos, as, obviously, they haven't been drenched with flavoring syrups. Some people ran
the mason jars in which they were storing tobacco through the dishwasher, or boiled them,
in order to sanitize them. Some didn't. One person said that in his part of the country,
mold was a concern and he was trying to eliminate mold spores, I guess.
How air-tight are the mason jars, when lidded and ringed? I cannot say from personal
experience. I am sure you could put them through a pressure canner and make them as air-
tight as any other home-canned product, but I question whether cooking your tobacco in that
manner is a smart idea!
Only one of the videos on the subject gave me the impression that
the man behind it had been doing this for any length of time, and he seemed to be satisfied
that he could just throw tobacco in a mason jar, add the lid and ring, tighten it down, and
it would be good for years, though he never stated outright just how long he'd been doing
it. Still, it seemed to be a long-standing practice of his to take tobacco that he'd
bought, tried, found he wasn't really interested in at that time, and throw it in a small
canning jar for long-term storage. He seemed utterly unconcerned that it would dry out, so
you can take that for what it's worth.
It seems to me that he's right; let's say that you
bought a tin of Dunhill "Early Morning Pipe," just to try it out, and realized that you
might not be in the mood for it all that often. Throwing into a jelly-size jar with a
sealing ring would certainly keep it from drying out months longer than just keeping it in
the original tin would. Another video-maker showed how, once the lid and ring had been put
on and tightened, once the ring had been removed (which you would not do, 'til it was time
to get the tobacco out), he actually had to pry the lid off with a fingernail, making an
obvious popping sound in the process, which, to my mind, clearly indicated that the seal on
the ring was pretty good in spite of not actually having been through the pressure-canning
process.
I have since had that experience myself, every time I open one of my half-pint mason jars.
I don't know. I do know that, God willing, I will soon start buying about a pound of
tobacco a month and jarring it up for years-long storage. If they jack up the taxes, I
will save a bundle. If they don't jack up the taxes--well, aging improves tobacco anyway.
This is the procedure I plan on using.
First, I will boil, and let air dry, as many mason jars, lids, and rings as I think I might
be likely to use. This might not be, strictly speaking, a necessary step, but one fellow's
point was well-taken: considering that we are talking about, potentially, storing this
tobacco for
years, is a few minutes extra effort really too much?
Then I will gently melt, and keep melted, some paraffin wax. I will have a small paint
brush handy, and some plumber's teflon tape, and some waxed paper.
I will pack the tobacco in as tightly as I can without actually squeezing the dickens out
of it, leaving just a small space at the top. Atop this will go a piece of waxed paper,
big enough that when spread out with my fingers, it pretty well covers the surface of the
tobacco. Then I'll put the lid on the jar. Then I will wrap some of the teflon tape on
the jar threads and screw on the ring. Then I will take the paint brush, turn the jar
upside down, and "paint" some wax under the ring, between the bottom of the ring and the
jar. When that cools, which should take but a very few seconds, I will turn the jar
right-side up and "paint" a little wax around the top of the jar, along the inboard edge of
the ring, contacting both the ring's edge and the jar lid. That way, I seriously doubt
that any tobacco will be contaminated with wax (and if it is, it will be but a smidgeon,
and what's a smidgeon compared to the half-pound of tobacco?), and, friends, it
that
arrangement doesn't prove to be air-tight for years at a whack, I'm not sure what will.
Come to think of it, it strikes me, even as I write, that the wax-and-teflon-tape is likely
to be
so effective that having the "mason" jars and lids might not be necessary at
all. It strikes me that
food jars--and friends, we go through about one large jar
of Smucker's natural peanut butter a
week in this household--would, if treated in
the fashion I mentioned above for short-term storage, would be just
fine: the tape
and the wax would render the assembly as air-tight as it needs to
get.
I'm not sure
I would want to boil them, though. They are not made of tempered glass. Perhaps I could
dip them?
I don't know. There's really only one way to settle it: experimentation, which I will
undertake shortly.
But, mason jars or peanut-butter jars, I am going to start doing it as quickly as I can.
As of this writing, three tobaccos have recently arrived from
Smoking Pipes.com: a little
"Star of the East" bulk tobacco from Cornell & Diehl, some
Luxury Navy Flake from Peter Stokkebye, and a small tin of Greg
Pease's
"Cairo."
Now, the Cairo is one thing. It is tinned. I am sure you could order tin after tin of the
stuff, and as the tins are air-tight 'til you open them, it'd probably be good for as long
as you wanted. But on the other hand, even in the bigger tins, the stuff is four dollars
an ounce. Not a dramatic expense, you might say, if you're smoking about two ounces a
month (which seems to be the pace I'm on), but every dollar counts, right?
"Star of the East" and "Luxury Navy Flake," on the other hand, as I said, are bulk tobaccos
and come in plastic bags. In quantity, it looks like I can get them for as little as 1.83
an ounce. They are pretty good, very much to my taste, and you can rest assured that I will
start ordering them by the pound as quickly as overtime and good common sense (I do have
other things to do with overtime money, after all) allow. And I will start jarring it up
and putting it at the back of the closet, hopefully securing at least a couple of years'
supply before whatever administration comes to power decides to jack taxes up through the
roof, or bans internet sales altogether. 53 pounds of tobacco ought to see me through 'til
my death at the statistically likely age of 85. Check back with me in ten years to see how
my preservation methods worked.
A Few Useful
Websites
There are many others, of course, but you may want to look at these first. The first two
give, among other things, the names under which certain manufacturers have marketed either
seconds, or another line of pipes. The others are just, for lack of a better word, handy,
except for Christianpipesmokers.net, which provides a handy little forum for all sorts of
discussions.
pipephil.eu
Pipedia.org
Christianpipesmokers.net
Forces
Smokingpipes.com
Cupojoes.com
