To Smoke or not to Smoke
Let me preface this by stating I’m a non-smoker. In fact I’m the worst kind of non-smoker; I’m an ex-smoker. This not only has improved my health and hopefully given me a longer life, but has also had the added benefit of allowing me to lord it over those that still smoke. There’s nothing quite so soul satisfying as climbing on a well-worn soapbox and preaching an unarguable, “holier than thou” sermon to people whom have heard it all before. Their eyes glaze over and a stoic expression creeps upon their faces as the endurance of yet another barrage of “Smoking is bad for you – I quit so can you” crashes upon their ears. As every smoker knows, there’s nothing more irritating than an ex-smoker.
Smokers are assaulted in their habit at every turn. We utilize billboards, television, radio and the newspapers in our denunciations. We never give them a moment’s reprise in the constant assailment of their habit or in our plea for them to resist the demon tobacco. Who hasn’t seen the picture of a smoker’s lung or the dying emphysema patient still smoking through a tracheal tube, or some other such incentive to quit? Such visual effects! Such dramatic appeal! The message is clear; “Join us, our brothers and sisters. Cast off the yoke of nicotine oppression and breath in the cool clean air of freedom or die a horrible death!” Thank the Lord there’s no short supply of sanctimoniousness in our efforts.
Smoking, as everyone by now agrees, poses serious health risks. Everybody that is but those diehard few that blessedly refuses to allow facts to sway them in the face of their own higher truths. Or those occasionally seen elders that have smoked their whole lives and somehow seem no worse the wear for it. Smoking, for the most part, has even gone beyond being simply bad and entered into the realm of darkness and evil. If the president wants to sway the people toward war, he need do no more than show Saddam Hussein handing out cigarettes to small children. The howls calling for his head would be quick and deafening.
There has been one bastion though, one sanctuary we have allowed smokers, at least until now. That one place in which they could breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy the comfort of being a majority is, of course, the barroom. We have driven them from almost all other public buildings. We’ve either limited them to small, inconvenient areas or outright condemned them to the bitter cold or the blazing sun when the desire or necessity to smoke comes. Ever restricting, ever closing in until now, finally, we’ve run this fox to ground. And so begins the last struggle.
And it’s of this I wish to speak.
Currently there is an attempt to pass legislation that would ban smoking from all public buildings. Similar attempts have previously been made, but this time powerful backers have signed on and it looks likely to pass. In a perfect world I would rejoice. I love going to the local saloon, talking with the folks there or just listening to the local happenings and gossip. It’s a relaxing atmosphere and I enjoy it immensely. What I don’t enjoy is the smell of cigarettes permeating my clothes when I leave. No, in a perfect world that’s one aspect of the tavern I wouldn’t mind seeing disappear, but we don’t live in a perfect world.
This has me scared, this well-meaning but I think misguided effort. The poor tavern, my oasis, has withstood the years. It has withstood the ever-toughening DWI laws. It has lasted through good times and bad. Like a beaten fighter that won’t leave his feet, it’s been staggered but not floored. The enactment of this law though I fear might be the fatal blow that will knock it out of business.
When I walk into the tavern, I’m well aware that a non-smoker is in the minority. I know the dangers of secondhand smoke and I know it will be there in abundance. I’m an adult, all in there are. All have entered of their own volition; all are free to leave at any time. Does a smoker have the right to subject me to the dangers of their habit? No, not if it’s against my will. But if I’m informed of the facts, as all certainly are in this circumstance, and still choose to place myself in that environment then how can I possibly play the victim?
I go into the tavern and have a few beers now and then. I’m not compelled to do this. I don’t have any undeniable, irresistible urge to have a beer. Well there are summer days when that might not be true. But generally speaking it isn’t the liquid refreshment that draws me there. It’s the people I will find within. Those interesting characters I’ve come to know in the ten years I’ve lived in Knox. They’re my neighbors; they’re my friends.
Some of them smoke and I wish they didn’t, though in honesty it isn’t my decision to make for them. Contrary to the currently portrayed public image, smoking doesn’t make them bad people. It also doesn’t make them any less interesting to converse with. It’s something they do and I accept it. I accept it because the value of their company outweighs the danger proximity places me in. Tell them they can no longer smoke there, alter their sanctuary from the world, and I fear they might well cease coming. In the process of sterilizing the air, the atmosphere, the very reason for going there, might be sterilized as well.
And what will we have gained? Such drastic measures remind one of the Vietnam era oxymoron “We had to burn the village to save it.” Is adding an extra burden onto the already struggling small business owners the only way to save me from secondhand smoke? If endangering the existence of the places I’m subjected to such imminent danger helps save me from myself, then far better to go the last yard and adopt even more draconian measures such as outlawing tobacco altogether. However as our lawmakers seem unwilling to take such severe and decisive steps, I would ask that they acknowledge my capacity for reason and allow me to make my own decisions in such regards.
I don’t like smoking. I don’t like what it’s doing to my friends and indirectly to me. I don’t like the smell or the residue it leaves. But is this enemy so vile that we must chance trampling into dust even its associations? Can there not be some form of comprise on this issue? If the question is raised: “Do I like breathing in all that secondhand smoke?” the answer is no. But if the question becomes: “Am I willing to risk seeing the demise of my local saloon, or any other business I frequent, rather than endure secondhand smoke?” the answer is not just no, but resoundingly hell no!