Alabama restaurant smoking ban goes down in flames again!

"It is difficult to find the words to thank all that helped with the defeat of the smoking ban legislation in Alabama last week. However, Rick Payne and the guys at Havana Dreamin in Montgomery, Charles McLain at Tinderbox in Mobile, Cigars & More in Birmingham, and CRA member Timm Gentry in Mobile, and the members of the Kiss My Ash Cigar Club in Mobile deserve special mention. Alabama House Majority Leader and Chairman of the Rules Committee, Hon. Ken Guin deserves our thanks, and for his (staff) patience with all the calls to his office. Also, let's keep the Alabamians Against the Smoking Ban page up, and build it in the coming year. Senator Vivian Figures says she's coming back with it next year. We'll be ready."

- J. Glynn Loope, Executive Director, Cigar Rights of America - April 26 at 11:47am

My personal thanks to all of you who helped with this! Keep it up folks, it IS making a difference!

Rick Payne - Havana Dreamin'

Cigars for Troops was a big success!

Special thanks to Lee Owen, seated at far left, for putting this benefit Bar-B-Q together for us! We raised over $1500.00 to provide cigars for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, plus over 150 additional cigars in the collection box. We had already shipped cases of cigars to our contacts in both locations and received thank you e-mails from both. We'd also like to thank each and every one of you who have donated cigars and money to show your support.

Here is an e-mail we got from Jay in Afghanistan:

Rick, all --

Hope all's well in Montgomery, and that Havana Dreamin' is flourishing! Apologies for the delay in getting this to y ou; it's been brisk here the last few weeks. Operations are going very well. As our Commander, MG Nick Parker, put it yesterday, we're holding in Marjeh and the Helmand province now, and Kandahar is next up. The next 30 days will be the pivotal point, as the local population has to decide whether they support their government or not. For us at the HQ, it's mostly long days and many, many meetings (Zzzzzzz) with our ISAF counterparts, but we have the occasional rocket attack to spice it up, and even us REMFs work hard on occasion. The attached PowerPoint should give folks there a bit of the flavor of where we are and what we're doing, but the troops out there are winning the day; the question of whether the Afghan government can capitalize on that remains the sticking point. However, we truly do appreciate the support we get, and it's a privilege to work alongside the Brits, Canadians, Romanians, Au stralians, Afghans, Dutch, and the rest of the coalition forces. We sometimes forget what it means for our coalition members to be here; the Romanians, for example, have a company of infantry in N. Helmand now, alongside our Marines. That may not seem like much, but the 100+ in that company are a substantial part of their military (approx 75000 -- about 1/3rd the size of the Marine Corps), and they intend to bring over about 600 more. Not too shabby, that. The cost, however, remains high. This morning, we sent a Marine home... the ramp ceremony is always a sobering experience. With that, will close for now; it's a bit after 6:30pm local time, and I need to wrap up a couple other things yet tonight. Please extend my thanks to everyone there, and I look forward to a good cigar with y'all in May. Cheers!

Very Respectfully,

Jay
JAY C. STEUCK, Lt Col , USAF

and one from Matt in Iraq:

Chuck
Unbelievable! Only word to describe the box of cigars! Within minutes
I was getting smiles from guys getting cigars. Best job of the day! So
far, in the joint HQ all services have received a cigar...I am headed to
the CDR of the subordinate Task Force to get the smokes out to some
deserving Rangers! I will definitely smoke the cigar you picked out
with the attached note...Thanks for making my and many others day!
Cheers,
Matt

As you can see, your kind donations were very much appreciated!

Thanks again to all y'all!

Nick Perdomo

Nick Perdomo, owner of Perdomo Cigars, stopped by for a visit along with Chris Harper the Perdomo National Sales Manager.

Chris Harper, Chuck Holland, Nick Perdomo, Rick Payne and Dave Harwood

We had a perfect deck-weather day and enjoyed a Perdomo outside!

And to our delight Nick said, "If I lived in Montgomery this is where I'd hang out!".