Turkey the place to go when you want meerschaum, but it wasn't always like this. Up until the 1970s the exportation of the valuable soapstone was stopped by the Government of Turkey, with the excuse of starting up their own pipe industry.
Now not all meerschaum comes from Turkey. But if you want a meerschaum pipe you'll have to scour the entire internet looking for good meerschaum pipe that wasn't carved in Turkey. Now normally I will not delve into political matters of this kind very often. But I feel it is best that we lobby the Turkish government to re open the exportation of meerschaum. Because mainly I feel it is unfair for the Turkish government to prevent the pipe making of meerschaum pipes in other countries. Not to mention that it hampers the spread of knowledge of how to carve a meerschaum pipe.
If Turkish government fears that the flow of meerschaum would destroy or cripple their own industry. Then I say lets do an experiment. Where the Turkish government would allow about six tons worth of meerschaum to be exported to the United States, Canada, England, Denmark, Italy, and Russia. Where as each country would then distribute to the rest of the world were pipe smoking is known. Russia would distribute to Eastern Europe, Italy distributes to Central Europe including Switzerland, England would distribute to Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula and France, Denmark would have the Scandinavian Peninsula and the rest of Northern Europe.
With the United States charge with distributing to Mexico and the entire Central American region including Panama and Canada would primarily distribute to Greenland and the Caribbean.
Then the Turkish government can, depending on UN survey on how many pipe carvers go out of business in Turkey, increase or decrease the flow of meerschaum. Or a much simpler plan would be boycotting every meerschaum pipe and publicly protest at every single Turkish cultural event, including Turkish Embassies, until the flow of meerschaum is reopened.
But until that actually happens then there is no chance that Meerschaum will be openly traded.
So I'll puff you later.
