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Last week, state Sen. Dan Grossman proposed a ban on smoking in all indoor public places in Colorado. That might give our state a more progressive image, since we currently trail the trend-setting coastal states. Rhode Island just passed a ban; it joins California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts and New York. We could become the first state with a smoking ban but without a shoreline, and that must mean something.
Another reason people might support this law is that they distrust the free market, even though it's working their way. In venues that don't regulate indoor smoking, like Salida, the number of ashtray venue continues to decline. The downtown cafe and the brew-pub both used to allow smoking, but don't now. The fast-food joints on the highway have all banned smoking in recent years.
The bakery may have been the last place where you could both light up and eat. But it just changed hands and is now being remodeled, and it's a safe bet that smoking will be forbidden when it re-opens.
In other words, even this backwater is moving toward smoke-free restaurants without any assistance from the legislature. As for taverns and taprooms, who goes to a saloon for health, anyway?
Not that people don't occasionally try. One afternoon a few years ago, I dropped into the Victoria Tavern here and took a seat at the rail. I had a Bugler rolled and lit by the time the barmaid got to me. She glared and told me that it wasn't good for me.
I told her I knew that, and ordered a cold one. She told me that beer was bad for me, and persisted even after I explained that it was made from wholesome barley sprouts. Then I asked for some jerky, but received a lecture about the evil of all meat, especially processed stuff with a shelf life measured in decades.
Not long thereafter, I saw Peter Simonson, the owner.
You've got to do something about your day bartender,
I said, and recounted how she was working to ruin his
trade.
I'd fire her if I could,
he explained. But she
needed a job, and she's my sister.
Despite her brief efforts, the Vic retains its ashtrays. If you don't like what you find in a taproom -- not just smoke, but loud people and the sour aroma of spilled beer and the peanut shells on the floor -- then why go there? Find a place that caters to your desires for purity, rather than enact legislation to put every publican in your pet straitjacket.
Simple as that is, some people have trouble grasping the concept of markets and choice. But there's one result of anti-tobacco activism that deserves further study.
Consider that, even as more of America becomes
smoke-free, we also read of a decline in American
civility.
Could there be a relationship?
Nicotine is a drug, and if enough people are affected by
a given drug, it must have an effect on society. The first
people known to smoke tobacco are the Native Americans. In
many of their cultures, tobacco was burned at the peace
pipe,
not a war pipe.
Clarence Darrow, the famous American lawyer, was known for criminal defense, but he handled civil cases, too. In his autobiography, he recounted that he preferred settlements to trials, and a good way to get one was to put all the parties at a table, and as they bummed cigarettes off each other, they would come to terms.
So there's some anecdotal evidence, at least, that nicotine serves as a lubricant for the frictions of American life. There are also scientific studies which indicate that nicotine moderates the effects of schizophrenia.
Thus there might be a real connection between the decline in tobacco use and the increase in road rage, postal rage and various other rages these days.
Somebody ought to look into that. No matter what this study might show, the self-righteous will pursue their purity crusade. But we ought to know just how harsh and quarrelsome our society could become after they succeed with their improvements. We might even come to look upon the pre-smoke-free days as a pleasant time when people weren't snarling and lunging at each other.
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