The Smoke-Free Path to Hell

Puritan: A pious gentleman, who believed in letting all people do as he liked.

—Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary

The moment passed quietly Tuesday night, with only the sound of idle bar chatter, ESPN highlights of the days’ playoff baseball games on television and hundreds of cigarettes being simultaneously extinguished to mark the abolition of smoking in all bars in Cambridge. I admit I am an occasional smoker, particularly at bars, but inconveniencing me or people whose clothes smell smoky at the end of a night is not the issue here. The real issue is that this law is an attempt by a group of meddling politicians and nosy puritans who would like to impose a sanitized, smoke-free lifestyle on the rest of the country—whether we want it or not.

The anti-smoking movement was once a noble group that fought to prevent children from smoking and expose the liars and crooks in the tobacco industry who made billions while their customers died of lung cancer. But, like so many feminists who see an aggressive phallic symbol in every missile, monument or oak tree, extremists have stepped to the forefront of this movement. These people no longer seek to inform the public but to conform it to their way of life and, with disturbing speed and success, have made smoking illegal from the laid-back lounges of SoCal to the dimly lit dives of Southie.

These crusaders have learned from the mistakes of their forebears who over the years have sought to ban everything—from alcohol to politically incorrect speech to women being seen in public without bonnets—and have traded in the role of morality police for that of “friend of the working man.”

The Cambridge smoking ban, we are told, aims to improve the workplace safety of bartenders and waitresses, that noble lot forced to contend with low pay, no health insurance and, if they work in Harvard Square, passport wielding Euro-trash who don’t know how to tip. But, behind the second-hand smoke statistics and public health claims lurks the upturned noses and holier-than-thou stares of those “pious gentlemen” who believe in letting us live only as they see fit.

I don’t want to sound as though I have no sympathy for bartenders who suck down the equivalent of a pack of smokes every night on the job, and I fully support serious restrictions on smoking. Ban it in all bars and clubs over a certain size. Enact strict air quality regulations, forcing bars to use fans and ventilation systems to cut down on smokiness. Hell, ban smoking before 9 p.m. in all bars; bar owners would certainly accept it and all other regulations over a total prohibition.

But of course most smoking-ban advocates have not considered such measures because this ban isn’t about protecting workers. If that were the case these same people would be lobbying for better health coverage or higher wages for bar and restaurant employees, many of whom make far below minimum wage and rely almost wholly on tips to make ends meet. Were it about helping out bartenders these Smoke Nazis would have considered the adverse effects the smoking ban will have on bartenders. Let’s take New York, where the economic impact of the ban has been so great that even the state Health Department is now considering granting waivers for bars that face the possibility of going out of business for enforcing the ban.

To gauge how bartenders really feel about this ban, do as I did all too often in New York this summer, go out for a beer and talk to them. What they’ll tell you is business, particularly late-night business, is down and so are tips. They’ll tell you neighbors complain about the noise from smokers outside and piles of cigarette butts they leave behind. And they’ll tell you how many customers say they are going out for a smoke and skip out on the tab.

But once again, these are not considerations that most politicians and prudish public health missionaries have taken because this ban is not really about helping bar employees but about enforcing a way of life. A certain group of people, whether they be Starbucks swilling gym-junkie yuppies or the spiritual heirs of 1920s Prohibitionists, would like to see smoking banished from their gated kingdom. Their hand has been tipped by the most notorious of their lot, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has repeatedly called smokers “stupid” and “crazy,” and expressed disbelief that people didn’t drop their cigarettes in disgust after his prophetic illuminations.

So let’s ignore for a moment the illusory claims that this law is only meant to protect bar employees. Let’s also ignore claims that a public sick of smoky bars has been the power behind it, if they were active bar patrons then smoke-free bars would have already sprung up to meet their demands. Let’s remember it is a paternalistic “do as I say” attitude that has been the real driving force behind this legislation. Smoking is obviously an unfortunate and dangerous habit but there is a huge difference between what decisions health-conscious people should make and what laws the government should enact.

Joe Flood ’04 is an English concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.