Cigar shops fret over higher taxes, smoking laws
NEW ORLEANS — With the world becoming ever less welcoming for tobacco smoke of all kinds, the owners of specialty shops that sell premium cigars have converged on New Orleans with the same concerns as mass-market cigarette manufacturers — higher taxes and anti-smoking laws.
The cigars at the annual trade show of the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association are not the packaged stogies found in an isolated corner of a convenience store. These are hand-rolled smokes — sometimes with Cuban seed tobacco grown in a non-embargoed country — that can go from a couple of bucks to $30 each…
