The need for change is coming. As we, the cigar world, have seen there have been a few victories. In Nevada the Governor signed a bill effective immediately permitting stand-alone bars that keep people under 21 out to serve food as well as allow smoking. Connecticut passed a 50 cent tax cap on cigars. Out here in California where some of the worst anti-smoking laws are being placed on us, the legislature beat down a bill that would have prohibited smoking in tobacco shops. It still places restrictions on work place smoking, which in all honesty I can be behind as well, but tobacconists and private clubs will be exempted. These are small, but legitimate, steps in the right direction as a free America, I hope. One of the things I think we should always do to help ourselves is have the courtesy that most cigar smokers show to all people around smokers and non-smokers. It does seem that there will always be the bad egg to overcome but if we keep putting our best foot forward we can educate the public about their misplaced fears. I personally find myself smoking at coffee shops a lot, and with that I am always looking to see if there is a place that the smokers sit. If not I take my coffee and stogie to a seat further away from the non-smokers, and even then I still let all the people out there sitting, enjoying their coffee and pastries, kmow that I will be lighting a cigar and if it brothers them to please let me know. And I have found that only a handful of times someone has asked me not to, or to just go a little downwind from them. But most Americans, I hope, are more than willing to allow me to smoke as a right, as I respect theirs to not have to smell tobacco. In a great debate that I had with a personal friend and great professional chef, Yanni Morris, we talked about our rights. It got me thinking, really thinking, that my right to smoke is no more or less valid than anyone else's right to not smell smoke from a cigar. And I think we sometimes forget this, and a little courtesy can and does still go a very long way in our world. And who knows, maybe that person will remember you someday in the future as he/she is voting or talking to a government official and mention or vote to keep America free and strong.