[Vision2020] New topic

[Joan Opyr]

On 8 Dec 2005, at 09:30, jill was framed wrote:

> Hello All -
>
> Been off the list for awhile but came back to see what's new.  New 
> subject...what do you think of the new Washington no smoke ban?  I 
> think we just might have a few more packed bars here in 
> Moscow....vices are good for the economy!
> Personally I don't smoke but I think the bar should be the one place 
> people can cut loose and relax.
>
> Now I'm going to catch up on the archives and see if I've missed 
> anything.
>
> J.

Okay, here's where my odd libertarian streak (not to mention my North 
Carolina tobacco-farming family history) comes to the forefront: I am 
concerned about the health risks of second-hand smoke to bartenders and 
wait staff.  I know that as non-smoker who grew up in a house full of 
chain-smokers, I have something like a 3 times greater risk of 
contracting lung cancer, and while there is treatment, there is no 
cure.  I know all of this and yet . . . we have the right to our 
various vices.  With each new broad-reaching, 
protect-us-from-ourselves, anti-smoking ordinance that passes, I feel a 
wild desire to drive down to the reservation at Lapwai and buy a carton 
of untaxed cigarettes.  I want to go into the Co-Op puffing on a 
Sobranie Black Russian in a long FDR filter, fling my mink coat over my 
shoulders, and say in my best Bette Davis voice, "What a dump!"

This makes no sense.  I really don't like smoking.  I'm an asthmatic.  
My father and grandparents nearly killed me with their ceaseless 
puffing.  We used to take 800-mile road trips with my father, who 
chain-smoked brown More cigarettes with his window cracked open one 
inch, as if that would dispel the choking smoke.  I used to have to hit 
the inhaler once every fifteen minutes, all the way from North Carolina 
to Michigan.  By the time we reached the halfway point in Charleston, 
West Virginia, I was bouncing off the doors of our wood-paneled Country 
Squire station wagon.

And yet . . . my high school in Raleigh had both a teacher's and a 
student's smoking lounge.  Smoking, tobacco farming, tobacco auctions, 
the annual harvest -- these are the things of my childhood.  Nothing 
smells as good as fresh-picked tobacco when it's hanging in the curing 
barn.  Once you turn it into a dried-up cigarette and set fire to it, 
frankly, it stinks.  But before that, tobacco smells kind of like 
raisins or cured dates.  It's a sweet smell, but not sickly or cloying.

Finally, just how many of our vices is the government planning to 
regulate?  When does regulation cross the line from public good to 
personal harassment?  No, I don't think smokers should stink up 
restaurants where I'm trying to eat -- and we all know that a smoking 
section right next to a non-smoking section means the whole joint is a 
smoking section.  Smoke pays no attention to signage.  I also have to 
admit that I enjoyed the new non-smoking pubs in London and Newcastle.  
I could indulge my own vice for pints of alcoholic cider without coming 
out reeking like an ashtray.  But I do hate to see smokers clustered 
around the entrances of buildings, twitching and puffing like heroin 
addicts at the methadone clinic.  And how long will it be, I wonder, 
before my own vices come under relentless legal assault?  Wouldn't it 
be better if someone watered down the booze in my Bahama Mama at 
Applebee's?  A couple of those and I feel like singing . . . a couple 
more and I feel like singing opera, Bugs Bunny style.  (Put those AA 
brochures back in your pocket.  I only do this about once a year.)

Okay, I've meandered down memory lane long enough.  I approve of no 
smoking in restaurants; I think that bars should have the option of 
allowing smoking or not, as they see fit.  We have the right to smoke.  
We have the right to overeat.  We have the right to drink, to not 
exercise, to exist on a diet of Pepsi and Fritos, to live fast, die 
young, and leave a corpse so bloated it requires a piano case.  We 
should not be regulated, bullied, or pressured into Jack LaLane 
fitness.  The health costs of smoking are tremendous, and they should 
be born by smokers and by the tobacco companies; not by the rest of us. 
  But I don't hate smokers, and I don't believe in treating them like 
pariahs.

Just a few thoughts, addled, no doubt, by my family's ceaseless puffing.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.joanopyr.com


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