The new lounge is a tribute to four generations of the Sosa family, with pictures of family members decorating the walls. The gathering place blends contemporary furnishings and high tech with old-world charm. Pendant-style light fixtures adorn the room while a hand-crafted glass bar top resembles a floating block of ice. The back bar is illuminated with silhouettes of tobacco leaves and back-lit with images of fire. Custom-designed, hand-crafted wooden humidors hold more than 100 facings of hand-rolled premium cigars - from the Fuente Fuente Opus X to the house-branded-and Fuente-made-Sosa cigars. An expanded terrace offers guests outdoor seating as well.

Sosa Family Cigars and Walt Disney World Resort have enjoyed a long-standing relationship over the past ten years. Downtown Disney West Side is also home to Sosa Family Cigars, a premium cigar store showcasing a large walk-in humidor and the art of hand-rolling cigars.

Originally located next door, the Davidoff shop relocated to its current 3,800 square-foot location at Madison Avenue and 54th Street in midtown Manhattan in March 2000. The sleekly-styled, Swiss-designed emporium unveiled a two-story glass walk-in humidor, pear-wood build-outs, French limestone floors, and "The Keep" - a second-floor private smoking lounge accessible by elevator.

To mark the occasion, Davidoff created 500 boxes of 10 limited-edition 51?8 x 52 robusto cigars featuring four Dominican Republic tobaccos-seven-year aged Piloto Seco from the Yaque valley's Piloto region; four-year-aged Cuban-seed Criollo from Yamasa; and two seven-year-aged San Vicente ligero tobaccos from mao and Jicomé, combined with an extra-fermented, aged Dominican Olor binder and sun-grown Ecuadorian wrapper.

In April, New York State Fair director Dan O'Hara, state Health Commissioner Dr. Richard Daines, and and Agriculture Commissioner Patrick Hooker all agreed to end tobacco sales on the state's fairgrounds, beginning with the NYS Fair in Syracuse.

According to published reports, O'Hara wants his administration to help with Gov. Elliot Spitzer's goal of making New York "the healthiest state."

"It seems ironic that they want to be the health police but the sale of unhealthy food and alcohol is free-flowing at this fair," notes Tarnowicz.

NYC C.L.A.S.H. founder Audrey Silk says, "In this case, 'to promote a healthy New York State' means to meddle in the private lives and choices of informed adults by restricting accessibility to a legal product."

If health is the overall goal, argues Silk, there is no explanation as to why deep-fried Twinkies and Snickers are still welcome at the Fair. New York City's Health Commissioner, Thomas Frieden, has claimed "New Yorkers are consuming a hazardous, artificial substance without their knowledge or consent," having compared trans fat to lead paint and asbestos as a "public health threat."

"This is product prejudice and consumer group persecution motivated by this feverishly singular hatred of tobacco, smoking, and those associated with either," says NYC C.L.A.S.H founder Audrey Silk .

"To be clear," Silk continues, "we're no longer even discussing the act of being able to smoke since smoking and possession of tobacco is still allowed on the fairgrounds! The issue and offense is the prohibition of sales. It denies one consumer group the right of opportunity to purchase a product based on a morality and ideology held by those in power and imposed on those with none, not legality of the product."

The lawsuit, filed by attorney David Novak of Hinman Straub law office, asserts that Hooker and O'Hara, exceeded their authority and violated the state Administrative Procedures Act, and that the policy is arbitrary and capricious, violates free speech pursuant to the First Amendment, is preempted by federal law.

NYC C.L.A.S.H., an organization dedicated to advancing, promoting, and protecting the interests of adult smokers and stands behind the right of private businesses to sell a legal product to adults, warns that this sales ban raises policy cannot be dismissed as small and local. "If allowed to proceed, the ramifications will be widespread. Like the smoking bans that first crept and then leapt across the country - it was New York's 2003 ban that has been credited for the rapid approval of bans that immediately followed nationally and internationally - [this latest movement] will infect the rest of the state and then country if it isn't stopped," writes Silk. "Incrementalism is a cornerstone of Anti-Smoking. Every small tobacco vendor across the country should be worried and those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Trade associations for delivery companies in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont successfully argued in an appeals court that a federal statute supporting the free flow of interstate commerce pre-empted the Maine law.

Maine attorney general Steve Rowe, who asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, argues that states should be allowed to exercise their historic public health police powers to stop delivery of tobacco to children. "States have the right and the duty to protect the health and safety of children," said Rowe. "This state law does just that by preventing youth access to tobacco products."

The Maine law - An Act To Regulate the Delivery and Sales of Tobacco Products and To Prevent the Sale of Tobacco Products to Minors- makes it illegal to knowingly deliver tobacco products to a Maine consumer if the product was purchased from an unlicensed retailer. Retailers must use only commercial carriers who ensure that the buyer is of legal age to purchase tobacco products and sign for the package and, if the addressee is less than 27 years old, to present identification showing proof of age. at least 18. To comply, carriers must specially inspect every package containing tobacco and destined for delivery in Maine.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal found that carriers had to change their uniform package-processing procedures to comply with Maine's law. That, said the appeals court, conflicts with the requirements of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act. It says states may not enact a law related to a service of any shipper.

The appeals court decision in the trade association's favor "leaves delivery sales of tobacco to children unregulated by any government, a result nowhere suggested by Congress or supported by common sense," Rowe's office said in asking the Supreme Court to take the case.

Maine's law was prompted by an increase in Internet tobacco sales carried out by direct delivery to consumers through the mail or by commercial carriers. The phenomenon has complicated Maine's efforts to regulate the sale of tobacco to minors and also caused it to lose tax revenue because of tax-free sales by unlicensed companies.