Walking by a tavern in the
late evening, seeing smokers clumped outside the door, their
shoulders hunched in the cold, puffing furtively, I’m not
sure what to think. In the temper of our times, I suppose I should
be pitying, maybe even scornful, looking down my nose at the
wretches, slave to a demon weed, weak wastrels that they are.
This moral superiority is becoming the public policy of
our times. First in small steps, now in lurches, we are banning
smoking in public places, even in businesses that do not cater to
the general public. In certain jurisdictions, we have expanded the
smoking-free zone to the great outdoors, isolating smokers to
colonies distant from public doors. Can the day be far ahead when
smoking on sidewalks becomes forbidden?
All this is so
different from the early 1970s. Colleges had ashtrays on desks, and
if not, we snubbed out our Marlboros, Winstons and Kools on the
linoleum floors. Students smoked, professors smoked, and if you
didn’t smoke, too bad. You smelled like an ashtray anyway.
In hindsight it’s easy enough to see this
thoughtlessness for the tyranny that it was. A fundamental civility
was absent. Every bar was a smoking bar, and non-smoking sections
in restaurants were curiosities. Smoking was accepted even inside
grocery stores.
Then the surgeon general rained on the
party. The response wasn’t immediate, but it was steady. One
by one, ashtrays began disappearing. Soon, smoking sections were
designated. Even lighting up in a smoking section on one side of a
restaurant you felt like you were crossing a double-yellow line.
Something once widely accepted was becoming impolite, on the way to
illegal.
My own career as a smoker ended 10 years ago
this month. That’s not so long ago that I’ve forgotten
the supreme pleasure of fumbling for the pack of cigarettes,
whacking it against my hand, putting a stick in my pursed lips,
then striking a match with practiced authority, cupping the flame
as if standing in a Wyoming windstorm. Then, there was a moment of
bliss while inhaling deeply and feeling the calming effect of the
narcotic.
Do I miss this as I stroll by those smokers,
now exiled out the front door or beyond? It still smells good to
me, almost as wonderful as a mulberry bush in bloom, though
fortunately not good enough to seriously entice me. Daily I have
cause to rue my long-term smoking habit. I also remember the
gut-wrenching struggle to quit. That alone is enough to keep me on
the clear-air side of the smoking partition.
In Colorado,
that non-smoking partition was moved dramatically last year,
leaving only casinos, a Denver airport lounge, and tobacco stores
open to smokers. Many other Western states have followed or are
likely to do so.
This new wrist-slapping law is supposed
to benefit waiters, bartenders and others, who no longer have to
inhale tainted, secondhand oxygen. And it does. It’s supposed
to benefit consumers, including me. And it has. The beanery down
the street, where the guy used to show up every morning, fidgeting
his way through the New York Times and a half-pack of
“nicotine-delivery systems” — as the cigarette makers
put it — has become more pleasant. The world for non-smokers has
broadened.
But the new law is not a compromise.
We’ve become as intolerant as we once were permissive. The
choices for consenting adults have narrowed. Vietnam, Korean, and
World War II vets, once rewarded with cigarettes for their
sacrifices, have been chased out of their lounges at the American
Legion and VFW posts. A tavern devoted to consenting, smoking
adults is virtually impossible. The pendulum has swung too far.
Where once in our nation’s history we allowed
cigarettes but banned beer, now we allow beer but ban cigarettes.
I see no good coming from efforts to nudge society too
close to perfection. Newspapers and our history books are thick
with horrors committed in the name of perfection. I distrust the
impulse altogether. Where to draw the lines of compromise —
that’s the difficult task of justice. But I believe we need
room for a few smoky taverns. I don’t need to go into them; I
just want the choice.
Allen Best is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He writes in
Denver, Colorado.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
