Rising tobacco sales suggest that pipe-smoking is making an unlikely comeback.
Rough shag, anybody?
Many ye olde things eventually become trendy again and the latest yesteryear fashion making a comeback is pipe smoking.
No one tracks how many young people smoke pipe tobacco. But the evidence, at least in the US, is of a renaissance.
According to the Cigar Association of America, 4,900,000lb of pipe tobacco were sold in 2006, from a high of 52,000,000lb almost 30 years ago. In 2008, sales climbed again to 5,300,000lb.
This modest increase is credited by many to retro-loving students. Facebook and MySpace have thousands of members signed up to groups such as “The Ladies’ Pipe Smoking Salon”.
The most popular Facebook group is “The Collegiate Gentlemen’s Pipe Smoking League”, with around 1,500 members globally. One 19-year-old member of the club recently told The Wall Street Journal: “They say everyone has an inner child. I guess I have an inner old man.”
(The Times)
When I was young I smoked a pipe for a few years - I think copying my father.
However, I don't think they are less of a health risk than cigarettes. I know someone who has been a lifelong pipe-smoker and developed cancer of the mouth.
Smoking a pipe was considered 'manly' for men, but what about women - does that make them manly too?
I remember some years ago seeing a woman on an archaeological dig in Winchester, sitting on the edge of a trench, smoking a pipe.
She certainly looked decidedly 'butch'. On the other hand, it might have been a long-haired man!
Incidentally, a woman using a long-stemmed cigarette holder, as in the twenties and thirties, can appear quite attractive and alluring.
