Mexico Why We Don't Visit Any Longer, Worl Tabacco Laws, Questioning Legalization, Senelio Edition Limitada Nicaragua 2022 104

00:00 Devin Hello and welcome to Smoking Underground. Today we are talking about Mexico. Why don't we visit anymore? Mexico. Mexico! And we are smoking the Senelio Edition Limitada Nicaragua 2022. A nice Honduran smoke. So without further ado. What's better than having your girlfriend change your flat tire in the middle of the city hood? Smoking Underground. Gotta light! Good looking smoke here brother. This is a good looking smoke I'm telling you. This Senelio is, it's this beautiful look on it. The band's got this nice S on it. Nice black and white and silver. Very classic. And the thing that I really like is it's got a pigtail on it to just pinch right off. Oh I do too. I was going to mention that there. Way to go dude. So I'm looking forward to lighting this up and while I get mine lit, John's going to

01:09 John tell you all about this cigar. And I really like it because of the size or the shape I guess. It's a pyramid. 6 and an eighth by 54. It's reported to be a medium strength with a Nicaraguan wrapper, Nicaraguan binder and Nicaraguan filler. And we all know how I like a Nicaraguan puro. And it's brought to you by, they call it God of Fire Senelio cigars. And they're inspired kind of by pleasures. What else? Senelio is the Spanish word for simple. And to be looking at this, it doesn't look like a simple cigar. Not with the shape, not with the pigtail. And it's actually a hefty cigar too. It feels well. I don't notice weight to cigars that often, but this one has a little bit of weight

01:57 Devin to it. I get the feeling John, that this isn't, it says simple, but I don't think this is one you'd give to a brand new cigar smoker. Because they look at that pigtail and go, what the

02:07 John hell do I do with that? This is your, oh we just got your W2 and that filled out. We're going to have you start rolling these today. Yeah. That's right. First day in the factory. I don't think this is the cigar you start with. No, I don't think it is.

02:22 Devin If it is, I would really hate to see what you do your second week. That's right. And then today's libation of choice is going to be the LaFroy Quarter Cask. It is a wonderful Isla Scotch whiskey. I highly recommend it. Pick it up where you can. Enjoy it. Scotch goes, in my opinion, with just about every cigar, maybe not flavored cigars,

02:43 John but it goes with everything. And the more of it you drink, the more of it it goes with, right? Yes, indeed. Keep in mind, you can pick this cigar up at any of these cigars and more of Itola Fine Cigars locations in the Birmingham Tuscaloosa areas. That's right. Orders $49, $50 or more. I want to say $49.99. We'll ship to you for free as of the recording date of this show. That's subject, always subject to change in the world we are. Go ahead, pick yourself up a couple and listen to a few other episodes and find out. What's the general price range on this one? This simple cigar? I honestly don't know what our pricing is. I lost the notes. Let's see here. It comes in a box of $25. You're probably looking about $11.50, $11.99.

03:35 Devin Man, that is such a great price. That's just a great price point for something so hefty and such great flavor. I think that's the point we like to pull across is there is a price gap difference sometimes when you step up to the $20 price range, the $50 price range, but you can still find some good stuff within that $10 area. I think you can find some good ones and you'll see we do a lot of smoking around that range. I mean, that's not our standard, but it's not our, I wouldn't say it's not our standard. It's not our, we have

04:08 John to. I get that feeling you're going to start seeing just a little bit better cigar in that low teens and up range just because everything's getting there. But in order for you to sell a cigar there, the public perception is still going to be, if I got to pay this much, it's got to be a good cigar. Right, right. Kind of the question that gets asked a lot more now is not what's new, it's what's good. They're not getting a $7, $8 cigar anymore. They don't want to smoke 10 cigars and have $150 into it to find out what's good. They're going, you've smoked them all. What are you recommending today? Because the money is actually getting up there and it's getting serious. And people might not have the disposable income to, oh, I'm going to try this. I'm going to try that. Even my regulars that would experiment a lot, they're even coming up and going, what do you think of this one? Or what have you heard about this one? A lot

05:10 Devin more than they were two and three years ago. Yeah, I would agree. Our main topic today is Mexico and why we don't visit anymore. And you're probably thinking, is this a travel episode? Is this a, you know, because of Montezuma's revenge? What's the deal here? Why are we talking about Mexico and why we don't visit anymore? Well, there's actually a little bit more detail into it. Something that's kind of like almost John's forte. It's almost like the legal light with John. I'll be honest with you. I'm still using that term, whether we've discarded it or not at the moment. And I think John can speak to this highly at this point. Gary, based off just the name of the topic, what do you think John's

05:54 Gary going to talk about briefly? Oh God. Well, let's say being to the today's time and, and, and of course, just gazing off the news in which, uh, it has just happened here recently. You know, it's Mexico's just the cartel starting to take over. I mean, it's, but on this particular case here, I think it's going to be, um, yeah, I think it's going to have a legal aspect to it here. I think so. Yeah. It's, you know, not only becoming, I think more and more dangerous, uh, down there, you know, and of course it's moving north, unfortunately, right. Thanks to, so we'll skip that, but yeah, I'm not in any hurry to go to Mexico and do anything down there, whether it be in general, you know, a good part of that country or a bad part of the country, because I mean, I've been to Honduras, Cambodia, right through the edge of Nicaragua, you know, so it's, you're looking at some stuff down there. That's those folks think another way they do. And man, drugs rules anytime, anything to make money, man, anything legal,

07:04 Devin illegal, blah, blah, blah. And I think it's very interesting to kind of start off John and his, uh, his, the legal aspect he's going to be telling us about it is it's pretty astonishing what happens down there and how their government and all the society over there. It's kind of alluding to what Gary was talking about, but how we're still getting really, really nice cigars out of those regions and stuff. That's what makes it a luxury. It's what makes it so good. Like the typical phrase is, you know, a cigar like this has touched a hundred hands before it's even gotten to you. And they're

07:38 Gary only charging you like 10 bucks for this thing or low teens. Let's, let's also clarify too. They don't do too many cigars down there. Tiamo used to be made down there in this particular case here, the seas tobacco, actually the San Andreas stuff that's grown down there is, is gone to the factories, you know, in Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominican and so on and so on. So yeah, we don't get too many cigars from that, uh, from that area that being it, you know, a little bit unstable. I will let you know that they make great beer. They make fantastic beer. They do. They really do surveys of man. They make some surveys and it rocks, you know, it really does, you know? So in the, I would like to clarify something too. And this is my apologies here. I thought I had everything going in the right direction, but John was doing the, John was doing the particular blend of 2022. I was doing the blend of 2020. There's two separate Serrillo blends and one of them, of course, this one is Nicaraguan, but the one I was going to was the 2020 blend, uh, which is all Honduras. Uh, this is totally different than the 2020 John.

08:50 John I'm glad you took over on that one. I had my wrong notes over here. Oh, it happens. It will too. Won't be the first day in light of all that. And while we don't visit Mexico, John, take it away. Tell us, tell us the legal aspect of it. That's important that people need to please John. Oh man, this is all well, when the tweet from the world health organization director starts out or actually reads Bravo Mexico, who welcomes such a bold move on tobacco control, we can count on all countries to strengthen no tobacco policies and help us prevent 8 million deaths every year. You know, it's going to be good for cigarettes, vape and cigars. Okay. Really? And basically Mexico, they say has joined nations such as Ireland, Greece, Hungary, and Malta with some of the most stringent smoke, smoke-free environments. No, Mexico has enacted basically the toughest anti-tobacco law in the world. Now, yes, this focuses a lot on cigarettes and that, but again, it hits cigarettes, it hits tobacco, it's going to hit cigars. And if it hits somewhere in a country that I believe it's like 16% of their adults, what's that number? Yep. 16% of their adults smoke, majority smoke Marlboro's, but again, basically as of January 15th, 2023, if you want to visit Mexico, the only place it is legal to smoke is inside private homes or private outdoor spaces. That's whoo. You cannot smoke on the street. You cannot smoke in a rented facility. You cannot smoke in a business. And I'm assuming this even will extend, but of course Mexico's corrupt and maybe a check will pass a dollar or pass hands and your resorts that we can go to and hang out that you never want to go beyond the walls will allow their smoking or their cigars. That's kind of what the countries I mentioned earlier, Malta, Greece, Ireland have. The new regulation also prohibits all form of advertising promotion and sponsorship of tobacco through any means of communication and dissemination of information, including direct and indirect exhibition of tobacco products at points of sale. So that means if they have it for sale, they have to hide it and you have to know they have it and what you're asking for. So there's no even going and looking through the glass window of the humidor and go, Ooh, I want that one. It's you better walk in and know what the heck you want.

11:44 Gary Doesn't sound very capitalistic. If you sent, ask me good grief. Good God. So what it's Mexico, right? Yeah. Forget to forget the cartel, forget the murders, forget the drug trafficking, everything else that goes along with that. Forget the high crime rate and, uh, and guards standing outside of the freaking convenience stores with shotguns because it won't get robbed. Forget all of that. Let's get rid of tobacco. Let's get rid of that. Like targeted for no reason. Right. Right. You know, I mean, it's, it's like, uh, let's just trash the car cause it's got a bad paint job. You know, good grief. I thought I wanted to live down there at one time. I've changed my mind entirely. But, uh, tobacco is not too bad coming from there. What are you thinking about this, uh, so really oh so far. It's in really, oh, amen. This is good, dude. This is good. Uh, what do you think, Dave? This is tasty, man. This is good. It starts off the right move. It's freaking going smooth. Great, great flavor to it. Man. It's got a nice little hint of cedar and vanilla, as well as a little bit of dark chocolate. See, I haven't gotten the vanilla out of it yet. Where are you tasting that? What are you the back end, the front end? I normally taste the front end. I leave the back end alone when it comes to taste. I'm shaking my head in disappointment

13:03 John right now. You're welcome. No, it's your way. You're welcome there, buddy. Six weeks since this law has taken effect, what do you think the sales of premium cigars have done? Uh, they've, um, strangely, I feel like they've gone up. I do too. They've decreased in sales by about 12%. You talk about it. And it's what I said. Sales depend on the presentation of the product. And according to Manelo Santiago, he's a master blender at Casa 1910, which is a brick and mortar retailer and also manufacturer. Wow. You can only make your purchases through a list. No logos, no images, only characteristics, measures, and the name of the cigar may be shown. Perdomo,

13:46 Gary 10th anniversary, Maduro, Churchill, Light Notes of Chocolate, mild cigar. Are you talking about purchase sales in that region? You're not talking all over. The entire country of Mexico. The entire country of Mexico. Okay. Damn. From the Yucatan peninsula to the doors of Panama. To the door. Did you hear they're changing their name? You didn't, you didn't, Mexico, they're changing

14:08 John their name. They're going to South California. That goes, why I brought this up is wasn't it California that had been knocking on the door, effectively banning all tobacco sales, that bill that they had presented. And of course got defeated this time around, defeated late February. I'm not, it basically would mean that in the year 2073, you would have to be 67 years old to purchase tobacco products. Geez. Because if this bill was to pass, no one born after January 1st, 2007, 2007 would be allowed to purchase tobacco products. That movie with Snake Bliskin about escaping LA is starting to sound more like reality almost. That's a good call there. Wow. We keep talking about all this California banning tobacco sales, Mexico doing this, these tobacco legislations, this tobacco, this tobacco, this tobacco. And of course, because cigars contain tobacco, they fall into. They do. Where is all the uproar about marijuana? Is it because we didn't let you have it for the last hundred years legally? You get a free pass for 50 years till we find out it kills you too. Not saying drugs are bad for you. Just saying, if you're saying taking inhaling smoke on a cigar or taking smoke into your mouth with a cigar, not inhaling it, is bad for you. It's not taking smoke smoke from marijuana and taking it into your lungs and holding it for extended period of time and letting it out bad for you. Am I missing some difference in smoke? Right. Because it comes from

16:05 Devin this weed or this weed that's better. Oh, but, but marijuana is all natural. Which baffles me when I hear that because I'm going, you know, tobacco is like an organic leaf that grows, right? There you go. Like it's fits in the same category of organic. The only reason it's not organic is the cigarette companies that use really crappy tobacco and then add poisons to it. Very good. This, uh, Sanrio, it's just, I can't imagine you looking at this and thinking, okay, this, this is the same as a cigarette. This is the same as marijuana. It's not even, not even close, not even close because I can get off of work sitting in the parking lot at my job, light up a cigar and be fine. Drive home with it in my truck. But if I light up a joint, which I never have, but if I load up a joint right there, my boss sees it. It'd be like, you could get fired for that. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy, man. It's crazy to not to, not to make a one for one comparison of the two plants, but you're talking the methodology of rolling them, lighting them and enjoying in the way that the individual ways that you enjoy each plant. It's similar. It's similar in that aspect. And I think all the legislation you have, that's now reversing, it's almost like Bizarro world. That's reversing is it's not based in logic. It's really not based in logic. It's, it's really just, just nonsense being pushed. In my opinion, it's nonsense. The fact that there is no real people aren't paying attention to the studies. We have a link on our website, smokingunderground.com for the monogram number nine. And it's like a 250 page like scientific blah, blah, blah, research paper that talks about the detriments and how minuscule they are. I think the highest one was like 1.7, something like that percent out of a hundred. And you're going what? Yeah. And you did the, if you do the same study on cigarettes, it's drastically different. And I'm sure if they did a study on marijuana, it wouldn't be that high

18:04 Gary either. It would, it would be, it would be similar to cigars in the, in the concept. That's beside the point. Yeah. Here's a, here's a little twist for you and John interrupt if you need to, if you, if you're, I can just say something. But, uh, my father-in-law, of course, is just going through some hard times. He had a stroke, you know, and, uh, he is a two pack a day smoker. You know, he enjoys his libation about a half a case a night and he had a hard stroke. He's, you know, he's not doing very well at all, but let me tell you the, let me enlighten something here. Okay. We went to the hospital and I was asking about how he's doing as far as the nurses goes, what's his vitals? Uh, and he's been smoking for some, I don't know, 50 years. Uh, he's 72, he's 72 and he's been smoking for some, I don't know, 50, 55 years. I asked him, I said, well, what's the vitals look like? Uh, you know, anything out of whack or whatever else. And she flipped that thing over and she says, no, no, everything. I said, what about his lung capacity? How's his lungs doing and his liver? And she flipped it over again. She said, they're normal. They're normal. And I said, what? And she said, yeah, they're normal. And I said, wow. Wow. So even the cigarette tobacco that he was inhaling for years, still has not done a whole lot to him when it comes to that. And that's crap. That's, that's considered junk, uh, along the tobacco industry. It's not considered good tobacco. It's not considered high line. And it's definitely not considered big leaf tobacco. She literally does not have as much nicotine as small leaf tobacco, which is what cigarettes are made of. Very strange that something like even that right there had no effect on him, even two packs a day. You know, it did constrict some, some vessels here and there, but his lungs were clear in a sense of he's gotten off of them within the last three weeks. His lungs are healing and I couldn't believe that that was fascinating to me, but I don't know that that right there just dumb founds me when it comes to people like that in the dope and then the cigars being, well, you need to keep those out of the way. I don't know. It's, it's boy, it's so bad.

20:26 Devin You get into the big cigarette lobby, all that kind of stuff. It's all money-based. It's not, it's not health-based. Cause you know, as well as I do in the nineties, they did that push for, stop smoking and that didn't stop people from smoking. It actually increased like their money just went out the roof. They just made so much money off of that campaign. Cause like, what's that saying? Like any press is good press, even if it's bad, you know,

20:51 Gary and that's exactly what it did. Yeah. That's what Larry Flint said. Larry Flint said, I marketing is marketing propaganda is where it's at. And, uh, and I was like, wow, you know, that's coming from a man who used to dress up in diapers and go out in public and in peddlers

21:07 John magazine. Uh, he got any more to add there, John, I did some quick bit of research here and don't get me wrong. If you want to smoke marijuana, I don't have a problem. If you smoke marijuana legal, legal health reasons, there's it's something out there. It's a vice. Cigars are my vice. That's not for me to tell you what vice you have or don't have. You know, if you want to smoke cigarettes, cigars and marijuana, it's all up to you. I probably would not advise you smoking our cigars in that mix though. Put one on each office right on. Oh my goodness gracious. States of the in the United States that have restricted the sale of flavored tobacco products, menthol cigarettes, cherry cigarettes, whatever. But this also includes flavored cigars, cherry cigars, vanilla cigars, chocolate cigars, brandy cigars, whiskey cigars, any of that. Cognac there's five states that have an entire or a total ban California, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. There are a couple municipalities in California that do have an exemption for premium pipe tobacco and premium cigars. But out of the 139 districts, basically localities in California, only three of those do exempt premium pipe tobacco and premium cigars. So California almost in its entirety. But then we can add to it municipalities and states not named Georgia, Illinois, which I know it's legal to sell weed there, Massachusetts again, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Washington DC, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Oregon. And actually Ohio is on the borderline of an entire statewide ban. Now in a quick Google search of municipalities and states that it is illegal to sell flavored marijuana. Washington State temporarily banned it for 120 days in early, well between October 2019 and December of 2020. Is there a reason why they did that? Because they felt it was targeting youth and they, I guess they wanted to do a test, but I can't find if this ban was made permanent or not. No quick searches show any place that flavored marijuana is illegal. Fire, agricultural product, inhaling into mouth, maybe into lungs. Why is C worse than vaping cigarettes or cigars? Right, exactly. Because they've seen some of the health negativities of vapes now. What do they call it? It's like bubble lung and all that. And you can say money, cigarettes and cigars still bring a ton of money into state coffers. Marijuana might be bringing 20 extra million dollars a year into Colorado, maybe 30 million now or something like that. But I would bet that you can get most of these places to get right there also or the money is going to be very similar. I guess they could do an analysis of that and maybe post it to a blog or something not to bore you. But my whole point here is Mexico's now done this total ban. Yeah, that's going to help them out. You might not notice it because I'm betting your resorts are going to have paid off somebody or made a political contribution. But if that country's done it, and we have four other countries that have kind of done it, it's 16% of their population smoke cigarettes and they're doing it. It's not even now just taxing for a syntax. Now it's eliminating it. And again, when it happens somewhere, it's going to happen somewhere else and it's going to happen somewhere else. The movement has begun to roll. Now, you know, it's really easy to prop a boulder up so it doesn't roll downhill before it starts to move. But when it starts to move, lots of luck stopping it. You might be able to, but it's going to take a massive amount of effort. And to be honest, I'm going to insult all of our listeners. Come on. None of you had the fortitude to step up before the boulder started to roll. You sure as hell aren't going to step up to try to stop it. What's going to happen is you're going to be about halfway off the hill and you're going to look down and go, man, why can't we do this? It's because the boulder is at the bottom of the hill and has mowed everything in the way. So that's why I bring you this legal stuff. That's why we've devoted this episode a little bit to legal. I'm not, again, I'm not against marijuana. I'm not, technically not against cigarettes. I'm not against vape. I mean, they're not things I enjoy doing. I don't drink a lot, but you know, the store I work at, Cigars and More 280, does have a bar and I will pour you a drink if you come up and order it after purchasing a cigar. Don't ask me, you know, what I like best or what I think is good, because I probably haven't tried 99% of what's on that shelf. You know, what was stylish when I was a kid doesn't exist anymore. And what was bottom,

26:15 Devin bottom well drink somehow has become very top of the line, top shelf now. Don't market it. Tito's has stepped up. Yeah, right.

26:24 John And I'm not naming certain vodkas and such and whiskeys, but it just listen, pay attention, buy your CRA packs, help support, throw, you know, if $120 is too much or a hundred, I think, well, $200 for the latest CRA pack. If that's too much for you, instead of buying five cigars, next time you're in a cigar shop, I'm sorry, Harris, buy four and send that $10 off to the CRA. They don't have to sell you a pack to accept your donation. Yeah. Amen. There. If everybody who comes in to see me on a Saturday would chip in 10 bucks, we're going to send $500 a week. If every cigar shop does that, we're going to, you know, think of how much could be derived even at $10 a person, you know, even if you only did it once. Yeah. It'd be crazy money. Get out there, pay attention to these laws, listen to us. You can look at it yourself. You can research it yourself. But just remember when you're standing there and you're looking and going, why is my cigar $25? And this guy is vaping marijuana that cost him six bucks for the same amount. There's nobody to blame but you. And I'm sorry to put it all on the listeners. I'm doing my part behind this microphone and on my soap box, but I'll get off my soap box. Now I'll let Nevin tell you guys what to do. Right. Oh, we will be smoking cigars outdoors among people in public. That's right. Yes. Yes, we will. Unless of course Mexican law jumps up here. Devin, you take it. I'm off my soap box for today. I thank everybody for listening. I thank everybody

28:07 Devin for letting me scold you and let's see what happens. I went way over our time. It's quite all right. Now this legal stuff is important. It's good to go through. We appreciate you listening. If you have any show topics or any links, you don't think John is able to get a hold of it. Like you get a legal link that you want to make sure he knows about, send it to us at cigarsatsmokingunderground.com. He will definitely take a gander of that because we'd love to have as many bullets in our gun as humanly possible when it comes to educating the public with this kind of stuff. And then you can start pointing people to the podcast and be like, they're going to talk to you about legal stuff, but they're mostly going to talk to you about cigar stuff. And you're going to enjoy it. You're going to be educated by the end of it. You're going to have the fight, the passion, the desire. And always remember you hit subscribe to our podcast, get those downloads going, make sure to hit our social medias, Facebook, YouTube, all that kind of thing. Other than that, thanks everybody for being here. Thanks for listening. Remember, don't forget to enjoy your cigar. Don't forget to stop and take the time to realize it's taken a lot for this cigar to get to you. So enjoy it. Because right now, while the pendulum is still relatively on our side, or at least in our court, you can enjoy it in the future. That may not be the case. I mean, five, 10, 15, 20 years from now, I may be pulling cigars from stashes. I've kept under floorboards. Hopefully not. You never know. There are to be good by the end. That's right. Unless it's a feral flying pig, but that's just my opinion. Oh yeah. So yeah, there you go. I think, thank everybody for being here today. We were smoking the Senilio edition limitata. Very good. Senilio. I have perfect pronunciation. Yeah, you do good. So that's what we were smoking today. It's a great stick. It's got a good body to it. Sure it does. It doesn't have a complexity of flavor, so to speak. Like it's not like, oh my God, every puff is this amazing complexity of, but it's got a nice, consistent mellowness of the darkness.

30:25 Gary Yes, indeed. Yeah. This is a, yeah, this has been quite enjoyable. I've really enjoyed this right here and I'm not a Nicaraguan fan. I've thoroughly enjoyed this though. I really have.

30:35 Devin Yeah, I have too. I'm with you on that. I'm not a huge Nicaraguan fan, but it's nice. It's not too shabby. Yeah, correct. Thanks everybody. Like I said, thanks for joining us again and we'll see you on the next exciting adventure of Smoking Underground with Devin, Gary and John. Peace. Later everyone. Later.