smoke 'em in the cold, mean streets if ya got 'em!

there's been a bit of hubbub in the news today about the smoking ban taking effect in d.c.-area bars, as there always is when a city enacts such a policy, and, as usual, i can't see what all the fuss is about. even when i smoked, i couldn't see what all the fuss was about. every time the issue comes up, bar owners stomp their feet and whine about how no one will want to come to their house to play anymore, ignoring the majority of the available statistics for cities that have already implemented bans, which suggest that more people go to bars and restaurants regularly now that these environments are guaranteed to be smoke free. the staff are healthier, the customers are happier, people who need to blacken their lungs with expensive, unspeakable evils can do so outside, and after about two weeks everyone has completely adjusted to the new rules. bar owners are concerned that they'll lose business to surrounding towns that don't ban smoking in public establishments, but the idea that anyone who was driving into d.c. from virginia just to have a drink would suddenly stop doing so strikes me as beyond silly; there are people who like small townie bars and people who like flashy city bars. if you're going out at all, you're doing it for the atmosphere. if all you were interested in was having a beer and a ciggie with your buddies, you'd have been doing it at someone's home, where the beers are always a dollar and you can take your shoes off. all this hue and cry, it's just, i mean, suck it up. you will still and always be more than welcome to kill yourself at a safe distance from me and all the rest of us who have chosen to do something different with our money and time.

the one truly sinister note in this melodramatic opera is that sounded by the state of virginia, a golden child in the tobacco-growing world, whose government has forbidden individual cities and counties from implementing smoking bans of any sort. the political subcommittee opposing the bans paints it as a personal-freedoms issue, declaring it unamerican to tell a property owner what he or she can and can't do with said property, but that, as i think we all know, is bollocks. we tell restaurant owners when they can and can't serve liquor, we implement regular (yes? fingers crossed?) checks from the board of health to tell them what they can and can't do in their kitchens, which they own, all in the name of the public good. but when we recommend that they tell customer a to stop exhaling toxic fumes all over customer b's hair and/or hefeweizen, we're fascists? come on. it's murderous navel-gazing, virginia house of delegates, and you know it. stand up and own your heinous wrong like a man--or group of men, as the case may be.

that being said, three cheers for washington, d.c., for not letting the country's legislative heart be the last place to show concern for the health of its citizens. the city has stepped up just in time to land in more or less the exact middle of the moral-responsibility road, leaving all our houses right-side up and as we've always known them to be. huzzah and happy new year, second verse, same as the first.