burning out, bumming out

Though I’ve smoked my share of cigarettes, I’m not a smoker. I recognize that it’s harmful, disgusting and has no place in nearly all public settings. But I still think it, and those who partake in it, have been unjustly vilified. The Oregon legislature passed a law in the 2007 session, to take effect on January 1, 2009, that bans smoking in all public places, including GASP! bars. Smoking in bars, I’ve always thought, is as inherent a component of bar culture as the alcohol. More power to an establishment that chooses to disallow smoking, it’ll likely attract patrons regardless. But enacting this law and taking that choice away from all establishments is unfair, uncool and…totally for the greater good. I’ve tried to write something to this effect before but always ended up trashing the drafts. Enter Chuck Thompson--he wrote the following in Esquire magazine.

I don’t smoke. Never have. Never will. I believe everything I’ve ever heard about the dangers of cigarettes. But bars are supposed to be subversive. Uninhibited, noisy, smoky. This was the atmosphere that put you in such a panic to grow up. Once you did, you appreciated the bar even more as one of the few places where the freedom to be an adult--in your behavior, contemptible opinions, hookups, vices--was never seriously curtailed.

Yeah, it’s nice to come home with clothes that don’t smell like an ashtray, but I miss the grime. I miss our history together. This country was founded on the tobacco trade; our Revolution was planned between swigs and puffs in musty places like Boston’s Green Dragon Tavern; Bogie wouldn’t have been Bogie without the coffin nails (to say nothing of Keith Richards); and Joe’s Corner Tap isn’t as fun when half the working-class regulars--the real target of this antismoking jihad--have to bail out midargument to huddle in the rain just to get in a relaxing huff. By kowtowing to yet another milepost on the road to American pussification, we might be saving our lungs, but we’re killing our seditious hearts.