Butts in the pool, smoke in my space
by Wendy Thomas, The Commercial Appeal
March 23, 2006

Having a no-smoking section in a restaurant, it's been said, is like having a no-peeing section in the pool.

Despite the best efforts of the folks in charge, there's just no way to separate the contaminated parts from the uncontaminated parts.

Call me picky, but I don't care for peed-in pools. And I absolutely loathe being exposed to smoke in restaurants or anywhere else.

Invariably, the no-smoking section butts right up against the smoking section, so not only can you watch nicotine addicts feed their sickness while you dine, you get to take home something to enjoy all evening: the stench of cigarette smoke.

It's in your hair, your clothes, and unless you scrub before you jump between the sheets, you'll be smelling like the Marlboro man all night.

A few Tennessee legislators get this, and they wanted to give cities and counties the right to decide for themselves whether smoking should be allowed in their restaurants.

Returning control to the local level -- that's a good thing, right? These were no-brainer bills that should have easily sailed through the House and Senate, no?

No. Unfortunately, the legislation wasn't of the sort about which our elected representatives could get fired up. The bill, introduced by Rep. Paul Stanley, R-Germantown, was shunted Tuesday to a study committee, the Capitol Hill equivalent of File 13.

As reporter Richard Locker wrote in Wednesday's editions of The Commercial Appeal, the House agriculture committee also voted 13-1 to kill a bill that would have outlawed smoking in restaurants that employed minors.

Here's the irony. The House's agriculture committee leans Republican, 8-6. That means the majority of Republicans, those protect-the-sanctity-of-life Republicans, did not want to protect the lives and health of kids who work in restaurants.

Want more irony? A bill to regulate the sale and display of sex toys used by adults got nearly as far as bills that would have protected the health of millions of diners and thousands of restaurant employees statewide.

The sex toy legislation ended with the line, "the public welfare requiring it," as did Stanley 's no-smoking bill in the house.

In this case, the public welfare really does require that cities be allowed to decide for themselves whether their restaurants should be smoky dens of carcinogens or clean, healthy businesses to patronize (that is if you don't order the cheeseburger with a side of cholesterol).

According to the American Lung Association, secondhand smoke is a known cause of cancer. Lung cancer caused by secondhand smoke kills 3,000 people each year, and heart disease caused by secondhand smoke kills 35,000 each year. (And smokers, please don't write me about your rights. You have no right to do anything that could possibly, even remotely, increase my chances of getting cancer.)

The agriculture committee -- and other legislators who could have signed onto the bills but didn't -- somehow managed to brush away those grim statistics like so many puffs of smoke.

I wonder how they feel about peed-in pools.

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