Ritz among cigar lounges at risk if indoor smoking loophole ends.

[Odessa]

 

Ministers face calls from health campaigners to end an exemption that allows patrons to smoke in upscale ‘tobacco sampling’ rooms

 

Eleanor Hayward

, Health Editor |

Andy Silvester

, London Editor

Monday December 01 2025, 1.20pm GMT, The Times

Winston Churchill is revered within the cigar lounges of St James’s in London

 

It is 5pm on a Tuesday afternoon, and the air in the smart upstairs lounge at JJ Fox cigar shop is thick with tobacco smoke. Half a dozen men are sunk into leather armchairs, cigars in hand, under walls adorned with memorabilia from Winston Churchill, a former patron.

The shop, among 25 cigar lounges in the UK, is one of the last legal vestiges of indoor public smoking since the 2007 ban.

Most are dotted around St James’s Street in central London, an area described as “Savile Row but for cigars”. This includes a luxury lounge at the Ritz hotel that sells £1,000 cigars, a cigar department at Harrods and the JJ Fox store, which began trading in 1787 and which houses Churchill’s “cigar armchair”. Some serve whisky, food and drink alongside cigars.

The future of these lounges are in doubt, however, as the government is under pressure to close a “sampling” loophole in the 2007 legislation, which allows customers to smoke on site.

The chair used by Sir Winston Churchill while he was selecting his favourite cigars at JJ Fox cigar shop

JAMES F FOX

Campaigners have warned that failing to close the loophole risks “allowing today’s children to become tomorrow’s cigar smokers” and further glamourising the habit, which is already growing in popularity among Generation Z.

The government’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill will make it illegal for anyone born from 2009 onwards to buy tobacco, phasing out smoking entirely for future generations.

Cigars have emerged as an unlikely focal point in debates as the bill passes through the House of Lords.

The JJ Fox cigar shop in St James’s, London

AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE TIMES

One amendment calls for the bill to ban smoking inside cigar shops.

A rival amendment, being lobbied for by cigar lounges, is calling on ministers to exempt cigars entirely from the smoking-ban legislation, warning it would “very probably kill our business and others like ours”.

Helen Duffy, of Action on Smoking and Health, said it should not be “one rule for cigarettes and another for cigars” as “all tobacco is equally harmful”.

Banning cigarettes while leaving cigars as “the only game in town” would risk younger generations taking up the habit, and undermine decades of work to reduce tobacco harm, she said.

Helen Duffy, from the health charity Action on Smoking and Health

AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE TIMES

“It would be irresponsible to leave open a loophole that allows today’s children to become tomorrow’s cigar smokers. Cigars contain the same addictive, toxic and carcinogenic compounds as cigarettes, and we’ve already seen with cigarillos and smoking in cigar lounges that any exemption will be exploited.

“The UK is on the cusp of introducing truly transformational legislation here,” Duffy said, adding: “It is not a risk worth taking.”

The original exemption in 2007 legislation for cigar lounges was to allow “sampling” of the products, which cigar shops said was necessary because they are fairly niche and expensive items. But Duffy said this loophole had been exploited. “We see so much more than sampling,” she said. “It’s cafés serving food and drink, putting workers at risk of second-hand smoke.”

Cigar lounges are not only historic shops in affluent areas. This year a new cigar lounge opened in Sheffield, within 400 metres of a school. The council’s public health team argued it would normalise tobacco use in a deprived area, but their objections were ignored.

In a recent sitting of the House of Lords’ grand committee, Baroness Merron, the minister taking the legislation through the upper house, indicated that the case “may or may not be a matter of enforcement”. She also said she expected that the age-based ban on tobacco products would force “specialist tobacconists to pivot their business models” in the long term and indicated she was not minded to take forward any amendments to the bill.

Research has shown cigar use is rising in younger generations, with influencers such as Andrew Tate promoting their use, saying “cigars make me stronger”.

A team at University College London found there had been a fivefold increase in non-cigarette tobacco smoking over the past decade, with use highest, at about 3 per cent, in those aged 18 to 24, though that category includes other products, including shisha.

The study did not record how often somebody smoked a cigar, and therefore will have captured non-habitual, special-occasion users. Vapes, by contrast, are used by 14.4 per cent of the same age group.

Most of the customers at cigar lounges in London, however, are older. The shops are very popular with tourists, particularly Americans, who are unable to get Cuban cigars at home due to America’s ongoing trade embargo on Cuban products.

A cigar lounge at JJ Fox

AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE TIMES

An industry of cigar sommeliers drawn from all over the world has grown up around the lounges, who have to show the same level of knowledge of their products as their better-known wine equivalents. For Jemma Freeman, the chairman of Hunters & Frankau, the UK’s sole importer of Cuban cigars, London is a centre for excellence for the industry and the specialist tobacconists offer a competitive advantage to the city as well as representing a bright spot on investment.

Jemma Freeman

RICK PUSHINSKY

“London is historically significant for cigars because there is a longstanding history of merchants, many of whom remain here and still operate today, and the specialist service that they can provide,” Freeman said.

“These merchants, this history, is part of the soul of St James’s.”

Chris Bischofer, the sales manager at JJ Fox in London, said: “We get some regulars who come in every single day. There are groups of friends, tourists and also a few politicians.”

Chris Bischofer

AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE TIMES

He argued that there should be a distinction between cigarettes and cigars in legislation, and it would be “completely ridiculous” to ban cigar lounges.

“Cigars are like wine: you age them and they become better in time. You drink a fine bottle of wine, not because you want to get drunk, but because you want to taste something beautiful. Cigarettes you just smoke: the taste doesn’t really matter.”

Jimmy McGhee, commercial manager of JJ Fox, said that removing the exemption for cigar lounges would have “significant tourism impacts for the country” and mainly affect “small family-run businesses”. He added: “We feel any serious calls to close this exemption are without any proportionality, as the health risk to the general, non-consenting public, especially children, is zero.”

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/ritz-hotel-london-close-cigar-lounge-7rd0vswst

 

[zacca]

Surely a number of MOPs have to be BOTLs, right??
 

To our UK brethren (in my best but still bad English accent): Can this bollocks really be taken seriously? 

[dicko]

Disgraceful. More destruction of tradition and freedom. Lots to say but will need to be [moderated]. Hopefully doesnt pass and I can enjoy some cigars at these fine establishments in the future.

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[Ford2112]

Sir Winston needs to be resurrected from the dead to save us all from this pathetic woke nonsense.