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Hernando Today

No-Smoking Nazis Stifling Freedom

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By JOHN HERBERT, From Where I Sit

Hernando Today

Published: December 31, 2008

It's not much fun for a smoker to overnight in Florida any longer. Gone are the days when the state's hotels and motels understood they are in the hospitality business. You play by their rules, even if you're a paying guest.
My idea of ending 6 to 7 hours of a hard-day's drive is to check into a welcoming hotel where I can kick off my shoes, put my feet up, read a book or newspaper, pour myself a drink and, not least, stoke up my smelly old pipe. Fat chance today.
Florida is far from alone, of course, in allowing anti-smoking terrorists to set the legislative agenda. Some states have banned smoking outright in all hotel rooms. That would include Vermont and Hawaii.
Hawaii wonders where all its chain-smoking Japanese vacationers have gone. Vermont used to be a hunter's dream-come-true; it still is, but many sportsmen are now staying across the border in New Hampshire, whose state motto is "Live free or die."
By throwing out all the smokers, do Florida hoteliers realize they are violating the "right to privacy" expectations spelled out in the state constitution? I equate a hotel room to the comforting shelter of one's own home. There's a lawsuit waiting to happen here, somewhere.
Why should hoteliers have to sacrifice a faithful segment of their market base? What Tallahassee would rather see, apparently, are for all smokers to become stay-at-home hermits.
A clear exception to all this legislative hanky-panky is in the Florida Keys, where many hotels still set aside as much as 20 percent of their hotel rooms for smokers. And where you can reckon on smoking in almost all of Key West's 500 bars and restaurants. Little wonder — or controversy; they're pretty much all outdoors in this zany tropical paradise.
It gives me a particular chuckle whenever I see Hernando County Sheriff Rich Nugent beating his chest in front of our county commissioners, boasting about how much money he may have saved taxpayers in health insurance expenses by forbidding his deputies from smoking, both on the job and even at home.
Someone should point out to Sheriff Nugent that he's breaking Florida law by keeping his staff from lighting up at home. He should at least extend to them the option of covering a higher smoking premium out of their own pockets.
Next thing we know, the sheriff is going to be patrolling the parking lots at McDonalds and Dunkin' Donuts. As it is, the feds have already encroached on our private pleasures by legislating the listing of carb and calorie content on some of our favorite snacks. If your waistline is getting too tight, that should be enough to tell us just to lay off the carbs for a while. Worked for me.
They want to do more. The feds are trying to give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products as well. Of course, the feds have already put the screws on new-car mileage. Whatever happened to good old supply-and-demand market behavior?
Another dangerous trend is some overly aggressive states are pushing for a ban on tobacco sales at drugstores like the nationwide Walgreen chain. A drugstore used to function as a community center, with a now long-gone soda fountain. Cigarettes, too? Candy bars will be next on the health-conscious federal hit list.
The move would give a competitive leg up to some of our drugstore/supermarket chains like Sam's Club, Costco, Wal-Mart and Kmart. Their tobacco sales counters wouldn't be touched.
If the no-smoking nazis had their own way, most of our classic old movies would have to be reclassified from "PG" to "R." We'd no longer be able to enjoy "Casablanca," for about the 30th time as we did on TCM the other night, because "Bogey" always had a fag going. Or any black and white classic by John Wayne or the Marx Brothers.
But I assume it'd still be OK to screen "Brokeback Mountain" or "Grand Auto Theft IV" for our "young'uns."

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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