TOBACCO SAVING MORE LIVES!

Source from:  cigarcyclopedia.com Los Angeles, April 23 05/17/2007

Plus: the newest wedding fad in India: cigar bars! The more tobacco is demonized, the more science finds its usefulness in medicine. The newest effort is in the development of vaccines for the treatment of cervical cancer. Dr. Donald Miller of the Brown Cancer Center at the University of Louisville is now working toward human clinical trials of a new vaccine which uses the tobacco plant for production. A vaccine against cervical cancer does exist, but it's expensive at $360 a dose and not even a possibility for use in Third World countries. Miller told a conference on cervical cancer that "The vaccine I have been working on is derived from the extracts of tobacco leaves. It has been successfully treated in dogs and over the next 6-9 months, we will be moving toward human trial. If successful, what I am confident of, it will be 10 times cheaper than the vaccine already available in the U.S. "Small pieces of Human Papiloma Virus (HPV) were put into Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV). A small piece of HPV was then taken out of the infected tobacco plant after two weeks and purified. It was then vaccinated into the mouth of dogs and challenged by the dog version of HPV. The ones vaccinated, did not get wart in their mouth." Miller is now negotiating with India to grow tobacco for the purpose of producing the vaccine on about 2,000 acres. It's only the latest installment in the continuing story of success in using tobacco to create less expensive and more efficiently created medicines to save lives. The newest wedding craze in India: cigar bars! According to Express India, Manish Dutt of Kastro's, a cigar store in New Delhi, We started cigar lounges at weddings last season and now everybody seems to want one. People like their space to relax and smoke." Reporter Namita Kohli explained, "Blame it on exclusive lounges at five-stars, a spurt in fine-dining, stand alone restaurants and newer cigar brands: cigar smoking like fine wine, is an acquired taste that Indians now seem to be comfortable with. Newly launched restaurants like Tabula Rasa at Saket's Square One mall and Smoke House Grill at Greater Kailash have added cigar menus to their repertoire. 'Seven years back when we started, no one was smoking cigars. Now people are lighting up everywhere,' says Chetran Seth, who run Cigari at the Oberoi Hotel." Seth is also the primary importer of Cuban cigars into India. The story notes that manufacturers outside of Habanos are taking note of the new trend in India. Now Davidoff has entered the market and is increasing its presence at airport duty-free shops, in bars, hotels and cigar shops. Seth also says women are slowly switching from cigarettes to cigars, expanding the smoking class. He's even planning an all-women smoker this week. Why not? An old Red Sox ace is still smokin' A pitcher who won 20 games or more four times, had a career earned-run-average of 3.30 and won 229 games in his career would probably command a salary of $10 million or more a year. %%pagebreak%% Luis Tiant is, instead, heading up El Tiante, Inc., which sells the El Tiante 23 Series cigar line made in Nicaragua at the Tabacalera Tambor. He also works as a pitching instructor in the Red Sox minor-league organization. But you can see him in cigar stores throughout the Northeast, where the El Tiante is sold. A recent appearance at the Owl Shop in Worcester, Massachusetts, was noted in the local Telegram & Gazette: "El Tiante has always been a cigar smoker," wrote reporter Clive McFarlane. "Some of his fans, forgetting that memory has a way of fading with time, will insist that a Havana cigar was either sticking out of his mouth, or lying somewhere on the mound, when he was a pitcher in the Major Leagues. It is not surprising then, that he would get into the cigar business." And it's working for Tiant, who many think should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But he's not, but he told the reporter that he's making more today than he did as a baseball player. And, "This game and this country have been good to me. Everywhere I go, people make me feel good, because they respect what I have done. You can't buy that with all the money in the world." For the smoker who has everything: We came across this while checking a series of links: CigarTables.com. It's the work of a St. Louis artist, Wendi Hook, who puts together table bases of cigar boxes from both the paper-dressed and cabinet styles and then tops them with glass tops of every size. Despite requests, no information on pricing or production times were available. But if you want to extend your devotion to cigars to the furniture, here's your chance. Hammer time: Sales of Opus X on eBay continued with vigor this weekend: • A box of 42 Fuente Fuente Opus X Belicoso XXX (4 5/8 inches by 49 ring gauge) sold for the "Buy It Now" price of $705.00 on the seventh bid, on Sunday. That's an average of $16.79 per cigar, compared to a retail price of $8.75 before local tobacco taxes. • A box of 42 Opus X Perfecxion No. 5 (4 7/8 x 40) drew 20 bids and a final price of $730.00, also on Sunday. That's $17.38 each for a cigar with a suggested retail price of $7.50. It turns out that there's also a market for Partagas 150 Signature Series cigars. A sealed box of 25 model AA (7 1/2 x 49) drew 14 bids and a final price of $404.00 last night from a seller in San Diego, a cool average of $16.16 each. Enditem