You stroll down a sidewalk in Muncie, in Bloomington or in Indianapolis and the gray twilight of early dusk settles like a cloud over your eyes, with the bright colors of day gently fading. A cool wind blows the air across your face, into your nostrils, mouth and lungs. Clean air. Strangely clean.
You look left and then right. The concrete paths are empty. Only you and your breath on the air like smoke. Perhaps a tumbleweed scoots along beside your feet. No, just a plastic bag caught in a current of air.
In any case, you are alone. You can't quite place what's missing from the bar fronts and restaurants around you. Again, you see your breath hit the air, freezing as it rises, almost smoky, but without the stale, chemical-ridden particles of a cigarette to choke your lungs. And the realization wafts over you.
There are no smokers -- smokers who once crowded the bars and diners and the sidewalk where you now stand, smokers who once stood over you laughing and taunting, blowing clouds of smoke in your face while looking down their noses, down the burning cylinders of tobacco into your eyes, raping your virgin lungs.
You laugh a subtle, ironic laugh. No. They never did this.
Perhaps you say aloud, "Where have all the smokers gone?" to the tune of a bad Paula Cole song. But perhaps not. Still, you wonder.
And then you see them. How could you have missed? On the windows, on trash cans, on telephone poles and green, rusty street signs hang a familiar emblem: a cigarette, circled and crossed by red. The Smoking Ban.
--
That's right. Indiana is now considering a ban on public smoking. This ban will include public places, defined in the proposal as "enclosed area(s), whether owned publicly or privately, to which the public is invited," as well as sidewalks around ATMs, phone booths, bus stops and ticket lines. Needless to say, bars and restaurants ride the top of the list.
I am not a smoker. I am no advocate of smokers' rights. I despise the very scent of blazing tobacco. Still, if a person wishes to have his lungs resemble a skinned chicken dropped in tar, and to enhance this trendy look while dining or poisoning his liver, why deny him this?
"But what about the non-smokers?!" you might ask. "The smoke in their lungs! The chemicals! The writhing agony and cruel, stifled breaths! Oh!"
Simple. If you don't want to inhale smoke, don't go where the fire is. Avoid bars and the smoking side of restaurants. This is your choice.
But this is not really about the smokers at all. It's about the owners of businesses. Is it not for them to decide their own policies? If their businesses are geared toward smokers in some way, so be it. This is their choice.
Nevertheless, the government's duty is to protect public health.
Ok.
Protect non-smokers from secondhand smoke. Keep them good and healthy. Fine. But what about the thousands of cars spitting millions of grams of pollutants into the air around us each day while we move along those sidewalks? What about all the processed "fast" foods we eat? What of these?
Well, to start off, should that smoking ban go into effect, I suggest an additional ban for the sake of humanity.
Two whopping, juicy, fat-laden words.
Monster Thickburger.
Write to Nick at nick_davidson02@yahoo.com
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