I Like Going To Bars and Still Being Alive Afterward

People love patios. That’s why last April I asked the maitre d’ at Sheridan’s in Cudahy to unlock a table and chairs. The waitress broke two water glasses on the way out to us. We had a couple Manhattans and left. People love patios.

Which is good, because there will soon be a combination of more patios and more standing on patios in Wisconsin. And the air inside bars will be more thick with complaining than with carcinogens.

The upcoming smoking ban has been on my mind lately, since every time I leave the house now I need to wear so many coats and when I get home they each smell like they smoked a pack of Camels. But they didn’t. And neither did I.

So I’m out of Febreze. Oh, and then there’s the heart disease and cancer I’m getting. But a lot of things can give you cancer, and it’s not like the government is banning bisphonal A.

Starting July 5^th though, cigarette smoking will be banned in all Wisconsin bars, restaurants, and sports arenas. There are two exceptions. A minor one allows cigar and pipe smoking at already existing cigar bars and tobacco stores that get at least 15% of their revenue from such sales. The other allows smoking in Indian casinos. Which makes sense I guess, since you can already go there to drink and gamble all night and pay $4 ATM fees.

So the Great Native American Revenge continues, as once again they seize the territory of freedoms ceded by our nanny state liberalism. Next they’ll be the only ones denying us coverage for inadequate medical care and selling us Double Hummers that run on crude oil and polar bears.

But that is a digression, of course. Since the new law bans smoking in all other workplaces, waiters, hostesses and bartenders no longer have to quit their jobs just so they can not have heart attacks every hour at work. But most of us don’t work in bars. So the argument over the smoking ban comes down to people like me being annoyed by cigarette smoke, and smokers being annoyed by not smoking. With the ban having passed, I get to find something else to be annoyed about and we all get to live longer enjoying that.

Either way, there’s no going back now. The ban will take effect six months from today and it passed the state legislature last year with wide support among Democrats and Republicans. Even before the ban, 39 Wisconsin communities already had some kind of smoking ban. So its unlikely that even Governor Walker could reverse it if he wanted to. 

(Here's kind of a neat interactive map that shows what everyone else does.)