Puffing promoted in new student cigar group

 by Andre Radzischewski
 published on Thursday, February 28, 2008

Lindy Mapes / THE STATE PRESS

STOGIE LOVE: Mechanical engineering junior Brad Gaul (left) and economics junior Josh Austin are co-presidents and founders of ASU’s cigar club, a social group for those who enjoy quality tobacco.

The smoke of a thick, Dominican Arturo Fuente slowly fills the air as a circle of cigar lovers chat about the tobacco's unique bouquet.

This may sound like a nightmare to nonsmoker, but it will be a dream come true for the two dozen members of the newly founded Cigar Aficionados Club at ASU.

The club will meet twice a month — once for an educational event, such as a cigar tasting, and once for a get-together, said Brad Gaul, a mechanical engineering junior and the club's vice president.

"[Cigar smoking] is kind of a romantic thing to do," Gaul said. "There's a very strong social aspect."

The University recognized the Aficionados as an official student organization after they filed the necessary paperwork and found a faculty adviser — sociology professor Benjamin Lewin — about two weeks ago, said Josh Austin, an economics junior and the club's president.

"We'd been talking about starting a club for a while," Austin said.

He and a number of friends had been smoking cigars socially for a while, but their official status now gives them the access to University resources, he said.

Gaul said he first got into smoking cigars as a lineman of the Mountain Ridge High School football team.

"After every game we won, we would always smoke a cigar," Gaul said, adding that the father of one of his teammates was a cigar enthusiast.

Austin and Gaul said they were not worried about their hobby posing a serious health hazard to anybody.

"There's danger to everything," Gaul said. "It's really how you live your life."

Unlike their counterparts on the cigarette front, cigar lovers typically don't inhale, Gaul said, and none of the club's current members smoke cigarettes.

"There's a line between cigarettes and cigars," he said.

But Arizona's smoking ban doesn't distinguish between the two. The law, which took effect on May 1 of last year, prohibits all smoking in all bars, cafés and restaurants, limiting the club's choice of venues to meet.

Consequently, the club will have to meet at the founders' condo for its monthly get-togethers. First, however, Austin and Gaul plan to have an educational event next week at Churchill's Fine Cigars on Mill Avenue.

"We're going to teach everybody how to rate a cigar," Austin said.

Churchill's store manager Blair Maki said he already has about 15 to 20 regular student customers.

"It's a small portion of the business," Maki said. "[But] more and more college-aged kids are getting into [cigar smoking]."

His store carries cigars in the price range of about $4 to $20, he said. The most expensive cigar in stock is $30.

Inside Churchill's, smoking is prohibited because the whole store is a walk-in humidor, or temperature-controlled cigar storage, Maki said. But customers can smoke their cigars in an outside area.

Churchill's doesn't serve food or beverages, but with its Mill Avenue location, "there is no shortage of coffee or alcohol" in the neighborhood, Maki added.

Throughout the semester, cigar experts will share their expertise with the Aficionados and, in the fall, Austin wants to take the club to the 13th Big Smoke Las Vegas Weekend, an annual gathering of cigar fans in Sin City, Austin said.

There, the club could make contact with cigar companies who might be willing to sponsor the Aficionados with cigar samples, he added.

Until then, they will have to continue to smoke their own cigars — with University blessing.

"We always thought it would be awesome to start up a cigar club at ASU," Gaul said. "One of our biggest regrets is not starting it earlier."

Reach the reporter at: andre.f.radzischewski@asu.edu.