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So long, Hav-A-Tampa

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 25, 2009

Tampa hasn't been the Cigar City for many decades. The cigar-manufacturing plants that provided the community a national identity long before the Bucs, the Lightning or even MacDill Air Force Base have been closing or relocating from the area for more than a generation.

Still, it's sad to see the closing of Hav-A-Tampa's Seffner plant, which produced the product so closely associated with a community that once hosted the Cigar Bowl.

The company will continue to produce cigars in Puerto Rico. But close to 500 local jobs will be lost. Hillsborough's sole cigar operation now will be J.C. Newman, which, fortunately, still operates a plant in Ybor City.

Hav-A-Tampa officials blamed smoking bans, the new federal tax on tobacco products that funds children's health insurance and the recession for a major drop in sales.

We are parochial enough to wish the federal tax could have spared cigars, which do not represent the health threat of cigarettes. Certainly federal and state lawmakers should not add to the cigar industry's existing burden.

But the truth is smoking bans and tobacco taxes, supported by the public, are not going away. And changes in Americans' smoking habits, more than anything, had withered the industry that contributed so much to the region's growth and prosperity.

We would suggest a federal bailout program, or the promotional slogan "Have a smoke to help a child," but sometimes an industry simply cannot escape economic realities.

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