But millions of people do see the need, and they're not all just looking for a nicotine hit. There is much more to tobacco than mass-produced cigarettes; premium tobacco is arguably every bit as artisanal as many of the other food and drink products that those of us in the culinary world obsess over. The unique leaf offers flavors that many find enticing, appearing occasionally in the works of creative chefs, bartenders, and baristas. At the French Laundry, Thomas Keller experimented successfully with desserts like coffee custard infused with tobacco. In Tampa, Cigar City Brewing crafts beers inspired by cigars. Tobacco bitters appear on fancy cocktail menus. In France, distiller Ted Breaux makes a liqueur called Perique that captures the essence of Louisiana pipe tobacco; it's a remarkable elixir with a light, tea-like quality, and alas, as of this writing not imported to the United States. (Cautionary note: Tobacco infusions can extract dangerous levels of nicotine, so anyone curious to attempt one should first do careful research.)

Links between alcohol and tobacco are not new. In Elizabethan England, the then novel act of smoking was described as "dry drinking." The metaphor is apt: Neither alcohol nor tobacco is essential to life, but both offer pleasant flavors while enhancing mood and sociality. And, of course, both are harmful when consumed in excess.

Stefan Wermuth/Reuters Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

My own introduction to tobacco came through the drink world too, though with coffee instead of alcohol. In my days as a barista, one of my best customers was a fitness instructor and avid cigar smoker. This combination perplexed me until I realized that he talked about his cigars the same way I talked about coffee. The varietal of the plant and the origin of the leaf mattered, a Cameroon wrapper tasting differently than one from Nicaragua. Flavors ranged from light claro tobacco to deep, dark oscuro, much as coffee roasts have their own spectrum from light to dark. I eventually realized that cigars offered rewards similar to those of the food and drink with which I was already enamored.

Though access to other quality goods has expanded in recent years, tobacco is ever more restricted. Smoking bans make it difficult to enjoy. Taxes make it expensive. And the Food and Drug Administration, which may soon regulate cigars, threatens to stifle the industry with heavy-handed rules.

Smoking bans are the most obvious difficulty for those of us who enjoy cigars. A good cigar could take an hour or more to burn, so huddling in the cold and rain to have one isn't an appealing option. Smoking bans are an inconvenience to all smokers, but for cigar smokers they can mean not lighting up at all.

Not content with banning smoking in most indoor environments, legislators have moved on to shutting down the remaining exceptions and extending bans outdoors and into private homes. The bans creep steadily forward, beginning with seemingly reasonable exemptions that are soon eroded. Boston, Massachusetts is a prime example. The city's original ban grandfathered in six existing cigar bars. This was apparently six too many for the city of more than 600,000 people, so a later ban wiped out that allowance and extended to outdoor patios. Boston's remaining cigar bars are slated to shutter after a grace period, a delay granted because, as one member of the Boston Public Health Commission so generously put it, "We wanted to give them a bit more time to get used to the idea that they'll have to close."