I enjoy the camaraderie and friendship you make when smoking cigars,” said Matthew Lanford, who has owned and operated Santa Barbara Cigar and Tobacco (10 W. Figueroa St.) for the last 20 years.
Lanford got his start in the world of tobacco at a shop in San Luis Obispo and has since been providing Santa Barbarans with hundreds of varieties, including his best-selling brand, Arturo Fuente. As for the long-awaited legal Cuban cigar, he said, “I’d love for it to happen, but it will be a long time, and I expect [when it does], the quality will suffer.”