As if the world wasn’t cautious enough, the state of Minnesota made all our lives just a little bit safer on the first of October, 2007. It’s on this date that the state declared all bars, restaurants, public areas, etc., to be 100% smoke free. Collectively, a fair amount of the state breathed a second-hand smoke-free breath of relief. Even I did. But is it all good? I doubt it.
As a part-time smoker (only when I drink, honestly), I’m all for the smoking ban. Not insomuch as for the health benefits (we’re all going to get cancer from something, it’s infuckingevitable), but for the personal hygiene and financial benefits. For one, I no longer have to worry about going into some ratty bar that’s reknowned for the cigarette smoke haze hanging above it and coming out smelling like garbage. I know that I can go into that bar and come out not smelling like stale cigarettes and fearing my bed and pillow smelling of the same. I know that I won’t have to brush my teeth 19 times over the next 24 hours to get the taste out of my mouth, and I know I won’t be hacking up a lung or blasting gym-teacher snot rockets all day. It’s great.
Financially, I won’t have to worry about buying cigarettes any more. One pack now can satisfy an entire group of my friends because we’re all too lazy to get up and go outside to have a cig. So now once pack of American Spirits (or God forbid, Camel Lights) will last easily an entire evening of gangbuster drinking. Hooray. Hell, it might help me financially in the fact that I might just quit it all together (since the smoking ban, I’ve had three cigarettes, I’ve counted…and all on one single night).
I have no problem with the smoking ban in any other regard. It makes me drink less, I’m sure, makes me pause to see if I really want one (which amazingly I don’t any more, which is weird), and I like not having the sick feeling or being smelly. In that, I’m happy. I guess I should also be thankful the great state of Minnesota doesn’t want me to get that cancer, but they don’t care about the ones I’m getting from my cell phones, the over-pollution, acid rain, the giant antenna farm on top of the hill, satellite waves beaming through my head, etc. They just want to keep the cancers to maybe two or three, MAXIMUM. Maybe in the next 30 years they’ll get around to the pollution thing and help my health out there, too. But in the meantime, they’ll just nip this one in the bud (I guess it’s progress).
But here’s the flip side for me: who the FUCK is the state of Minnesota to come in and tell private owners what to do? As a private businesses owner, I can’t allow smoking in my bar? Where’s the justice in that? Take The Reef bar, in Duluth, for example. This place is nationally-renowned (on a more reserved, sub-culture level) for a smoke-hazed booze bar. Now you walk in and it looks like it’s a completely different place as of the first of October. Where the walls ALWAYS that cheap wood paneling? But now, here’s the owner, who owns the entire building, getting told by the Government that he can’t allow people to smoke in his establishment. What’s up with that? Is Denis Leary right…are we going to be forced as a society to smoke in our closets of our private residences, hiding under a blanket (reference:” No Cure For Cancer”). That doesn’t jive for some reason.
Now the flip side to that flip side is this: the Government is protecting us, the people. That’s why they have health codes. The Government says it’s unhealthy to have toilets in places like The Reef backup and overflowing into the bar. They say that the cooks have to wash their hands before making you food in other places. They say that you can’t have rats and dogs and chicken blood all over your kitchen area if you prepare food for people. They are keeping us safe from these things (thank God). The Government has deemed these things “unsafe,” and therefore have created laws to protect us. That’s one thing they’ve done right. So what’s the difference between that and the smoking ban? Nothing, really…the state of Minnesota has deemed it unhealthy to be in a smoky bar, and just like banning the use of the same water that we flush down the toilet to prepare the food, they’ve banned smoking as well. Makes sense, I suppose. But really, has the Government overstepped it’s bounds by saying a recreational, personal choice such as smoking in a public place–that openly allows the practice–is illegal? Of course, there’s the whole “it’s-not-legal-for-a-person-to-shoot-a-person-which-is-a-personal-choice” argument to come up, but my fingers are tired and I don’t want to get into that.
In a nutshell, I’m OK with the smoking ban. It benefits me personally, and really doesn’t bother me or inconvenience me in the end. However, I can also sympathize with the people who the smoking ban does bother. I’m not passionate enough about the subject either way to take up arms with posters and petitions, but I can hear their side of the story. In the end, if we do have to end up smoking in a closet, under a blanket, I think that’ll be OK too. Because, as stated, it is a personal choice. So if I want a cigarette that bad, I’ll make it happen. I have the perfect blanket picked out, and my downstairs closet under my stairs is probably big enough to put a couch in as well. But it won’t come to that for me.
So in the end, maybe the great state of Minnesota is doing me a favor. Or maybe they are doing the state of Wisconsin a favor and forcing everyone into Superior so they can have their cake (euphemism for “beer”) and eat it too (er, close enough euphemism for “smoking in a public place”).
