Afterthoughts: Smoking to Byzantium

 

                                                                                                                  jingjofire

If you want to know which states enforce no-smoking laws and where (as in what buildings and what rooms in them) they are enforced, you soon find yourself trapped in a mystifying maze of byzantine proportions trying to learn which states ban or partially ban smoking in public spaces, which ones exempt some spaces from the law while prohibiting others from it to include or not to include restaurants and bars. Get it? Don’t bother: it is madness to try and not worth the effort. And yes, just FYI, there are casinos outside of Nevada where customers are not allowed to smoke. Most people (Villas excluded) don’t want to sit in a restaurant or at a bar and inhale second-stream smoke (cigar smoke, the worst) while drinking or eating. Ironically, what has taken place—now that many of us regard smokers as pariahs —is that people who like to smoke either don’t when they enter a public space where smoking is permitted, or do so apologetically (“mind if I smoke?”) and ashamedly.