The Cigar Industry Report is a one stop place to catch up on the activity here at Cigar Coop and Stogie Geeks. It is a combination of our news reports, cigar reviews, and assessment updates we do throughout the week. We will also recap what happened on our Stogie Geeks show. Finally, each week we will look back at Cigar Coop history. Look for this report every Saturday morning at 8am Eastern time.

Cigar Industry Report: Volume 6, Number 2 (Edition 203 12/3/16)

Feature of the Week: President Elect Trump Nominates Rep Tom Price to head Dept of HHS

It’s the Cabinet nomination the cigar industry will most be interested in. President-Elect Donald Trump nominated Georgia Congresman Tom Price M.D. to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services. This is significant because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is an agency under Health and Human Services. In the past Price has shown to be supportive of bills exempting premium cigars. We got the details here.

Cigar of the Year Countdown Begins December 9th 2016

We’ve delayed the start of our annual Cigar of the Year Countdown until December 9th. We got the details in this month’s Editor’s Corner.


News Recap

Legislative News

  • Senate Bill S. 441: S. 441 is the Senate Bill to gain an exemption from the FDA on premium cigars. This week, none new co-sponsors Chuck Grassley [R-Iowa] was added.  The total sponsor count is now 22.
  • House Bill HR 662: H.R. 662 is House Bill to gain an exemption from the FDA on premium cigars. This week, no new co-sponsors were added.  The total sponsor count remains at 170.
  • House Bill 2058:  H.R. 2058 is the House Bill to change the effective date for cigars subject to FDA regulation from 2007 to 21 months following any proposed regulations are put into effect. This week no new co-sponsors were added. The total number of sponsors remains at 78.
  • Federal: The Department of Housing and Urban Development will be implementing a smoking ban in all indoor public housing starting in 2017. Meanwhile President-Elect Donald Trump has named Cuban Embargo Advocate Mauricio Claver-Carone to Transition Team. This is a move sure to have ramifications on the future policy with diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Assessments

Agile Cigar Reviews

Feature Story


Stogie Geeks

 For Episode 211, we welcomed back Omar de Frias of Fratello Cigars. For our Debonaire Ideal, we covered Cigar Dinners. Our Hot Topic focused on The Death of Fidel Castro. Finally we had our Stogies of the Week which included:

Stogie Geeks Shorts

This week, we go through the history of the Oliva Serie V Maduro Especial Serie.


On this date December 3rd…