By Jeremy Lott

It was one of those rare moments that make following politics so rewarding. Earlier this month, the D.C. City Council passed on an 11 to 1 vote a fairly sweeping smoking ban. Mayor Anthony Williams decided to continue his Hamlet routine by announcing that he couldn’t decide whether or not to veto the law “on principle.”

By “principle,” hizzoner didn’t mean anything abstract or noble, like the notion that government shouldn’t stop people from lighting up at a bar after work. Williams explained that he’d support a total smoking ban at any pub, restaurant or place of public accommodation so long as the prohibition could be enforced throughout the entire D.C. metro area. Short of that blanket ban, he worried about “leakage” of bar hoppers from D.C. dives to the smoke-filled restaurants and clubs of northern Virginia.

As bans go, the law was as thorough as it could be, given the unusual constraints of the District. Council members can override Williams’ veto but they can’t override Congress’ constitutional right to override any piece of legislation passed by the D.C. government, so the measure was tailored to the tastes of Senators and Representatives. Many of our national politicos frequent cigar bars and so—voila!—cigar bars (and hookah joints) were exempted from the ban, and hotels will be allowed to maintain a few smoking rooms.

My guess is that Williams signs the bill into law and several council members suddenly decide to play ball on his stadium deal for the Washington Nationals, which needs to be wrapped up by Spring training—or Major League Baseball is none-too-subtly threatening to send the team elsewhere.

And the stroke of midnight this December 31st will usher in a strange new Bloombergian era of D.C. nightlife. Happy new year—no more smoke-filled bars and no more business from smokers fleeing smoke-free Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties. Maybe D.C.’s finest will be gracious enough to let us have one last smoke, but don’t count on it.

Smoking bans seem like the thing these days, and opposing them has come to seem a bit like being against fluoridation. Granted, the District will lose some smoking restaurant patrons to Alexandria and Arlington in the short run, and that’s too bad, but it probably won’t be long until Virginia enacts a wider prohibition. 

And so it goes, as that old chain smoker Kurt Vonnegut would say. Before I moved to northern Virginia last December, voters in every county of my native Washington state voted in favor of a statewide smoking ban not just in bars and restaurants, but within 25 feet of any entrance or ventilation shaft of said bars and restaurants. The initiative was so broadly written that the legislature may have to carve out a religious exemption for sects that use smoke or heavy incense in their rituals.

A list of states and cities that have enacted smoking bans or plan to do so would blow my word count to Smithereens, so a more pointillist approach will have to suffice:

• Last week, the executive of Howard County, Maryland, promised to veto a smoking ban because it wouldn’t kick in soon enough for him.

• This month a poll by the Arizona Republic found that a solid majority of voters from Barry Goldwater’s old stomping grounds think that smoking should be banned in bars and restaurants.

• By early February at the latest, the New Jersey Assembly will have prohibited smoking in nearly every public place, with the singular exception of casino floors because, c’mon, it’s Jersey.

• In San Francisco, the SmokeFree campaign is pushing to expand the city’s smoking ban to prohibit smoking at the entrances of restaurants and businesses.

Everywhere smoking is banned, we see a ratchet effect. Loopholes are gradually closed and the definition of public places expands. Smokers, consequently, are expected to suck it up and light up in fewer and fewer places. Of late, antismoking activists have targeted beaches and parks for fear that someone might be assaulted by secondhand smoke while playing Frisbee.

Nor is this mania for smoking bans something that the Gauls can write off as a silly American thing. My Irish heart sank in my chest when I learned about the ban on smoking in pubs in the old country that went into effect in 2004, but that’s become the way of things all across Europe and in much of the rest of the world.

Spain’s smoking ban was only the latest to go into effect this January 1. Juan Alberto Bellock, the ex-smoker mayor from the northern city of Saragossa, made headlines by scolding people for not bringing ashtrays with them when they walk outside to smoke. AFP summarized his message: “Keeping public spaces clean is as important as maintaining a smoke-free workplace.”

Even in nicotine-stained France, cigarette taxes have been hiked and some schools have cracked down on smoking. In has to rank as one of the great absurdities of all time that Joe Cherner, founder of SmokeFree and one of the prime movers behind the New York ban, fled to the South of France after the havoc of September 11 and then started campaigning against the mores of a nation that was still stuck “in the Dark Ages when it comes to the dangers of tobacco smoke.”

It was ugly Americanism run amok. Move to a new nation and then start lecturing the locals about their backward ways. The latest “action item” for France on SmokeFree’s website explains why the ban on smoking on school premises should be absolute. After all:

“Children should not have to pass through smoke to go to the library and the lunch room,” and, “It’s illogical to teach in the classroom about the hazards of smoking and then allow smoking after the class is over,” and “If smokers can abstain for an 8 hour flight, students can abstain for an 8 hour school day.”

Crusaders like Cherner have argued that the smokers are being paranoid. In public at least, they claim to support the right to light up, so long as it doesn’t infringe on the “rights” of non-smokers, even as they press for higher cigarette taxes and more and more restrictions.

But this “toleration” amounts to an extended last call. Smoke ‘em while you’ve got ‘em.

Jeremy Lott is writing a book about hypocrisy.