Where cigar manufacturers, importers, yea, even retailers, hath gone public and raiseth immense amounts of capital in initial public offerings, now those same companies hath been consumed by bigger companies, as Jonah was swallowed by the whale, and many hath gone broke.

Dost thou knoweth the cause?

Well, gimme a few minutes and I’ll tell ya:

When I originally started to write this column, (about 15 minutes ago), I thought the reason all this was happening was because all you cigar smokers were actually nuts. For reasons which I will shortly explain, I figured that the average cigar smoker “was not playing with a full deck.”

As many of you know, Smoke is too cheap to pay me for writing this column, so I actually have to do something besides writing for a living, and, therefore, I “moonlight” by selling a few cigars here and there. Now, while I’ve never really kept track of how many cigars I actually sell, my best guess would be about a million domestic and imported cigars a day. Therefore,I think that I have a lot better idea of what’s going on in the cigar business than any person who just writes stuff for magazines. Today those people are writing about cigars, tomorrow they’re writing about fruit juice, the next day about home health care ... they don’t know beans about any of these topics. If your not in the business you’re writing about, then you’re missing that lifetime of experience that separates those that know from those who are merely inquiring.

Anyway, since I spend my time with cigar smokers, I’ve noticed a lot of weird stuff during the last seven or eight years, all of which have made me think that the average cigar smoker is nuts.

While the Cigar Boom was in progress and half of the cigars being sold were overpriced, no-name brands, smokers lined up at cigar store counters, drug- stores, and even gas stations, willing to pay any price for any cigar that conceivably could be called a handmade product. In fact, the more that cigar smokers were charged, the happier everyone seemed to be. It was as if every cigar smoker in the world was yelling: “Come on, beat me, cheat me, but don’t let me leave your store without a fistful of overpriced cigars with gold embossed bands ... the more cigar bands you put on each cigar, the more I’m willing to pay ya.”

People everywhere wanted to own and stockpile all the cigars they could get their grubby little hands on before the next guy got to buy them, and price was no object. Discount cigar stores were stripped of their inventories, as the owners of full-price cigar stores secretly sent their employees in to buy all the cigars they could get away with. Then, the full-price stores were, in turn, stripped of their cigars, as restaurants and bars bought everything in sight, so that they could sell them for double the full price. The same cigars were bought and sold so many times that I used to kid people, saying that the average premium cigar in a bar or restaurant had 50,000 miles on it.

Well, that was then, and this is now. With the Cigar Boom at a merciful end, you can now buy all the legitimate world-famous cigars you want at incredibly low prices. In fact, in many cases you can buy them for less than they cost to manufacture. So, how come nobody’s buying them?

The same is true for cigar cases, cigar cutters, humidors, humidifying devices, cigar golf tees, cigar ties, cigar shirts, cigar suspenders, cigar movies, cigar music, cigar tie tacks, cigar cuff links, cigar pins, cigar rings, cigar caps, cigar coats ... there was even a company that made cigar-shaped dog bones, and another (wait till ya hear this) that created CIGARDENS !! These were gardens designed for cigar smokers to relax in.

Then, there are cigar pens, cigar lighters, cigar calendars, and even cigar breath mints and cigar cologne. Well, nobody’s buyin’ any more of that stuff either. When’s the last time you saw an advertisement for a cigar cruise or cigar factory tour, or even went to a cigar dinner? What happened to all the cigar bars that sprang up during the Boom? What happened to all the cigar manufacturers who claimed to have been in the business for generations? Where were they hiding before the Cigar Boom, and what rock are they hiding under now?

So as I started to ask myself these questions, I started to realize the truth behind the beginning and end of the Cigar Boom, and why cigar smokers could be crazy enough to buy and horde cigars when they were overpriced, and not buy them now, when they’re such a bargain.

Well, the answer to every one of the questions I could think of kept coming out the same: all those people in all those cigar bars and at all those cigar dinners; all the buyers of fancy humidors and ten dollar cigars, they weren’t really cigar smokers at all. They were just people trying to do what seemed trendy at the time, and they have now moved on to the next trendy thing. The real cigar smokers were standing off to the side all that time, just like me, and saying, “Look at all those crazy sons of bitches spending money like water. I’ll be happy when this whole cigar hysteria is over and things get back to normal.”

So, I apologize to all you real cigar smokers for even thinking that you were brain dead. To all those faux cigar smokers of a few years ago? I say good riddance. We can do just fine without you. There is great pent-up hostility within me, within many smokers, and within many cigar shopkeepers. We resent the years that we were cheated out of our money, cheated out of our supply of merchandise, and neglected by the entire cigar industry. Faux cigar smokers were treated infinitely better than regular cigar smokers, simply because they were willing to pay more for less. Manufacturers got carried away with their sudden popularity and did a vast disservice to the cigar smokers and storekeepers who had been the backbone of the business for decades.

Now they’re all paying the price. A golden opportunity to expand the reach of the cigar industry to new smokers and create decades of expanded sales was wasted as greed and arrogance reared its ugly head. New smokers were fed trash cigars at inflated prices, and veteran smokers found themselves unable to buy the cigars they had purchased for years in their favorite shop. It wasn’t a pretty picture. All the charlatans who posed as manufacturers and importers during the Cigar Boom are gone. All the trendy, pretentious little snots that gathered at cigar bars are gone, and so are the places where they gathered. Now all that’s left are people like you, and people like me, the real cigar people. It was the other people who were nuts, not us. It is high time that the people who earn a living from the making and selling of premium cigars took a good look around them and smartened up.

To you cigar manufacturers and importers: “We tried and true cigar smokers want the best cigars you know how to make, and we want them at sane prices. Don’t give us fancy boxes and multiple cigar bands, and highfalutin stories about how you age your tobacco and how every cigar roller has been making cigars for 50 years. Just give us a good product at a good price.”

- Lew Rothman