Notes From the Nanny State on a Holiday Weekend

At Bethesda Row cinema: I was in the ticket line outside the theater when the man in front of me asked the sales clerk, "Is smoking allowed here?" I thought for a moment that he was a renegade Rumpelstillken who wanted to smoke in the cinema. "No, smoking is not allowed in the theater," the clerk replied. The man then said, "No, I don't mean in the theater, I mean here on the sidewalk." The clerk replied that smoking was allowed on the sidewalk but not inside the cinema. The increasingly agitated man then yelled, "That is not acceptable. It still gets at you," then stormed off. I looked around and didn't see any smokers, just a few people eating ice cream. Perhaps a smoker had been walking by earlier.

At the Parthenon restaurant in Chevy Chase DC: I was sitting outdoors having dinner Monday night with a friend when I heard another customer angrily call for the waiter. The customer barked, "Is this a smoking restaurant?" "No," the waiter replied, "but customers of the bar [which is adjacent] are allowed to smoke directly outside of the bar." The customer was then as annoyed as the agitated cinema man and said that this was unacceptable. I was sitting next to him and never detected any odor of smoke. I think he just saw people smoking and was outraged as the nearest smokers were a good 20 feet away. Of course the smokers would rather be inside as they used to be, listening to music and watching sports tv, but were forced outside by the ban.

Those two incidents reinforced my belief that ban proponents are not motivated by health concerns so much as they just don't like the smell of smoke. And who does? But let's get honest about what is driving smoking bans. Getting a drift of smoke outside is not a health concern.