Fools by Choice

Mark Twain said he knew how easy it was to quit smoking because he did it hundreds of times. Today many of the 630,000 Colorado residents who still smoke and chew, most of them 18-24 year olds, are thinking about quitting as result of the statewide smoking ban that went into effect yesterday. Smoke-free gurus say on average it takes seven serious attempts.

Boys at bars throughout the state are lamenting the end of bars and bowling alleys as they know them. It’s worse than Armageddon. Young bucks will have to find new places to meet girls. Old coots will have nowhere to swap stories and tell lies. Their old ladies--the ones who drove them into the bar by refusing to let them smoke in the house--won’t know where to hunt them down for supper. City managers will have to find funds to compensate for lost excise tax revenues, and the cost of social security and pension plans will plummet as smokers prematurely lift off. Sales of spittoons will crater while sales of smoking cessation tapes, gums and patches will soar. Ashtrays will become pricey souvenirs.

The good news, according to Market Perceptions, a Denver research firm, is that 32% of Colorado residents say they will eat out more often. The bad news is that 23% plan to spend more time in bars, so discussions about whether the new law impinges on property, human and civil rights are bound to continue. Ireland may have pulled it off, but in downtown Colorado, some are still arguing that the smoking ban is unconstitutional, unpatriotic, and downright un-American.

Fortunately only 18% of Colorado adults still smoke. The rest of us run around in Gortex and Spandex, engaged in extreme sports, eating healthy, and holistic living. We guzzle flax seed oil, eat grains and use sunscreen while we bike, hike, kayak and rock climb. We hire personal trainers, nutritionists and masseuses to maintain our looks and stamina. In fact, we go to great lengths to keep the state and ourselves in primo condition. We don’t dig death and taxes, and we are not thrilled that in Colorado tobacco-related diseases annually cause 4,600 deaths and cost taxpayers $1 billion in healthcare.

Sandy, the smoking-hot barrista, says she knew the good old daze were over when Denver’s Buckhorn Exchange, which holds the state’s first liquor license, removed ashtrays from restaurant tables years ago and from the bar last year. Then young whippersnappers bought or inherited neighboring watering holes and began transforming them into designer piano, martini and tapas bars. Now Health Nazis are promoting the advantages of personal counseling, acupuncture and yoga to smokers who are far more likely to relieve irritability, frustration and anxiety by gunning down prairie dogs, chasing wild horses and going on runners.

Sandy maintains a bar is a bar, not a health club. Bar stools do not serve the same purpose as Nordic Tracks. Colorado has 10,800 bars, taverns and clubs where ketchup passes as a vegetable, a toothpick is a condiment, and you can dine with your hat on. The state has 7,668 health clubs, fitness centers and gyms where you can get healthy, and the tofu and sprouts capital of the world is Boulder which, wouldn’t you know it, adopted the state’s first smoking ban in restaurants and bars in 1995,

Guys named Slim, Shorty and Tex take a dim view of the smoking ban. They say it’s based on “iffy” information and “junk” science. They say we have turned into a Nanny State in the name of public health and safety. We have created a society of victims that looks to government to create new agencies to correct the error of their ways. So the Feds make rules about where we can drink, camp, shoot, fish and hunt and, having turned us into a nation of car seats, seatbelts and helmets, have begun dogging us to lose weight.

Jocks say smoking isn’t very smart. Same as driving 150 miles an hour on I-70, it can kill you. George Burns might have made it to the age of 100, but three Marlboro men, two Winston cowboys, the Lucky Strike Girl and the founder of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company didn’t. Peter Jennings, Humphrey Bogart and Edward R. Murrow lived romantic lives entwined in smoke, but it killed them. Weren’t the boys at the bar paying attention when stomach cancer nailed John Wayne in 1979.

Slim, Shorty and Tex know they're becoming an endangered species.  But they say they'd sooner die of smokin’ than drinkin’ carrot juice.