NEWS: You Don’t Have To Be Crazy To Smoke Here, But It Helps

CULTURE: You Don’t Have To Be Crazy To Smoke Here, But It Helps

Since I'm both a life-long non-smoker and a judgmental, condescending jerk, I've never really had much sympathy for the concept of "Smokers Rights". Not to get overly Eugene Debs about it, but if forced to choose between the right to light up in restaurants or bars and the right to not have to inhale second hand smoke as a condition of employment, I'm solidly on the side of the nanny state.



Smokers, when you're done coughing up a chunk of your lung, feel free to ready your Bill Hicks quotes. Hey, at least you're much cooler than me.



However, even a cigarette-hating authoritarian like me can't help but notice that the number of places where people who choose to smoke can do so without fear of legal reprisal has decreased rather dramatically since I was younger. Not that I'm old enough to remember when smoking was considered healthy, but the "If you want to smoke, kindly walk outside and stand around looking resentful while you do" practice that's been the result of smoking bans in offices and other commercial spaces still strikes me as something new and odd.



But what happens to smokers who can't just stroll outside whenever they like to take a smoke break?



If you think one of the bright sides of being sent to jail is that you could then smoke 'em if you got 'em, you better hope you're not going to federal prison, since they've been completely smoke free since 2004. I guess when you get sent to Oz these days, some scary Aryan Brotherhood scumbag buys your ass for a carton of pudding cups and a subscription to the Utne Reader.



If you're a slacker and only get sent to state prison, you take your chances. Thirty-eight states have passed legislation that prohibits inmates from smoking or restricts when and where they can smoke. Florida, for example, decided to outlaw smoking in prison, unless you're on Death Row. So if you hear a Floridian say "Man, I'd kill for a cigarette right now", run like hell.



Now chain-smoking criminals can't even catch a break by fleeing across the border into Canada, since the Canadian Correctional Service recently decided to institute a total ban on smoking in all of Canada's federal prisons, starting early next year.



But what if you plead insanity, or if you're batshit crazy in a less criminal way?



If you wind up being committed to a psychiatric hospital as opposed to being shipped off to jail you do have a much higher chance of being allowed to get your smoke on, but even padded walls don't seem to be keeping the rising political and cultural tide of anti-smoking laws at bay.



According to a recent survey, around 59% of psychiatric hospitals in the U.S. allow patients to smoke on the premises. Before any of you smokers quit your day jobs and start polishing up your crazy old man dancing, the folks who run these psychiatric hospitals also aren't too keen on smoking being seen as a right and not a privilege.



The same survey says that less than 2% of those psychiatric hospitals allow patients to smoke unsupervised inside their living quarters. The remaining psychiatric hospitals who allow their patients to smoke only allow smoking during certain set times, or in designated smoking areas, or when a patient is being watched by a staff member, and often combine all three restrictions.



Part of the reason smoking is so heavily regimented but not banned in many psychiatric hospitals is that it's used as a method of controlling patient behavior. As more and more psychiatric hospitals announce plans to ban smoking, the complaints they receive from staff members are based less on the rights of their patients but more on the fear that without being able to withhold access to cigarettes, patients may become harder to manage. The CEO of one psychiatric hospital that's planning to go smoke-free by January of 2008 described staff complaints this way:

When the staff did voice concerns about the patients, they seemed to be based primarily on pity:

Those of you who are militant enough about your right to smoke can now start polishing your "But officer, I have no significant relationships and my job sucks" excuse for the next time you're given a ticket for smoking in a non-smoking area.



Of course, the actual patients themselves are a bit peeved that what little rights they do have are being further restricted. When a psychiatric hospital in Connecticut announced plans to go smoke-free, one patient responded this way:

One could argue that being around someone while they play chess or baseball doesn't increase your risk of getting cancer, but the conflict between the rights of mental patients who want to smoke and the rights of hospital staff and patients who want to avoid exposure to secondhand smoke is more complex, at least to me, then the standard "Hey asshole, would you mind not smoking here? I'm trying to get drunk!" scenario.



Well, unless your choice of restaurants or bars involves being locked in, forcibly medicated and strapped to a gurney, in which case, you have a far more interesting social calendar than I do.



While the inevitable lawsuits about banning smoking in psychiatric hospitals wend their way through the courts, I'm going to go and celebrate my ability to appear somewhat sane to outside observers along with the pink lungs and smug feeling of superiority that being a non-smoker allows me to have by taking a lunchtime stroll through lovely midtown Manhattan.



Ah, nothing like fresh air and a lack of crazy people!

Fresh air? In a major metropolis like New York? i doubt it....

But to get back on topic:
I have a friend who works in a psych hospital. I had this discussion with him a few years ago when they first started about baning smoking here in Holland. He told me that it was a case of the nicotine actually having a calming effect on the patients. Not a method of control as stated in the article but really a form of additional medication (well, almost).

If the patients were to quite smoking they would degenerate to an even worse mental state than they are in now.

I can understand the desire to work in a smoke free environment. I think however that the care workers in these hospitals are going to have to accept exposure to second hand smoke as an occupational hazard.

Well, I'm a smoker (every so often, at least) but I pretty much agree with you, though I do think if a business wants to, they probably should be allowed to. I only get annoyed when I'm told I'm not allowed to do it when I'm not bothering other people. I mean, it's a lot of fun to be able to smoke in an indoor concert or at a bar, but I can certainly understand why it would not be allowed.

There are many other things that are terrible for you that don't get the same hated smoking gets, which I find a little silly. It just reminds me of all the anti alcohol sentiment before prohibition.

As for prisoners and mental patiants... I see no problems with them smoking in the yard or in designated areas where staff don't have to worry about being bothered by it. I used to know a place that had a sealed smoking section that had seperate ventalation and people could just go in there and smoke. It was cleaned by a janitor, and when the janitor was cleaning it, no one was allowed to smoke in there. It seemed like a good solution.

Whoa! I grew up in Agoura Hills. Calabasas (as far as I remember) is still in L.A. county, so can they legally ban smoking within town limits?

EDIT/ADD/WHATEVER: Holy shit. I just read this story in The Acorn.

We were down there last April and ate at the Sagebrush. I didn't notice if anyone was smoking outside but I know people (including myself) used to when we'd see bands there.

As a smoker, I beleive it is a privilege, not a right.

However, I believe that a business owner does have the right to chose what he or she will allow in their establishment.

That said...let the nutjobs smoke...I know it is what keeps me from going postal on my coworkers at times.

As a former smoker, I hate smoking more than most. Smoking was easily one of the worst decisions I ever made. That said, I'm sick of busybody pricks (that includes both citizens and the state) trying to regulate the behavior of others.

It seems to me that people confuse rights with privlidges. Visiting a restaurant, bar, concert hall or other private establishment is a privlidge, not a right. If I don't like how someone runs his or her business, then I may decide not to patronize that business, which I do quite often. What I don't do is tell others how to live their lives and how to run their businesses.

As a subject of the facist city of Denver, I'm pleased to come home from a concert or a bar free of cigarette stench. As someone who values my rights more than my convenience, I'm not pleased at all. What's next?

I was a long time cigarette smoker. In the good old days I could smoke on airplanes, in movie theaters, doctor's waiting rooms, etc. I think that banning smoking in those places makes sense.

It makes less sense to ban smoking in bars, football stadiums, and public parks. There is no credible evidence that sitting next to a smoker at a baseball game will harm you.

Solus makes the point that a private business should be able to make its own rules for its place of business, and patrons can choose to do business with them or not. I agree.

I now own a cigar store. It's probably the last place in NJ where you can light up indoors. True, if you light a cigarette I'll throw you out (well, not really, but we'll give you a hard time). Our business has been hurt, though, because people can't buy cigars and take them somewhere else to smoke, and not everyone appreciates the atmosphere of our shop - although we're friendly most of the time.

I also spent 4 weeks in a psych ward some time ago. If we couldn't smoke there they would have had to medicate us far more than they did. You can't make any headway on a mental illness while going through withdrawal from a nicotine addiction.

Smokers are an easy target these days - political points are scored easily with smoking bans. Common sense should prevail, but it won't. I fully anticipate a day when smoking in my store will be banned. That will be the day we close our doors for good.

Unless, of course, the law (such as a smoking ban) prohibits such right to choose what they will allow.

I went to a smoke free bar once- was like being in a fuckin space capsule

*proposed solution*
A). Smokers, should be allowed to smoke where ever they choose, provided the establishment/owner of the property permits it.
B). Throwing your butts on the ground, shall now be punishable by death.

*end proposed solution*

As a smoker who lives where there is a statewide smoking ban, I believe that the business owners should have a say in what goes on in their establishments. Part of what I do also involves working within a bar setting, and it hurts business beyond belief. I can understand banning smoking in areas where children may be present, but not in establishments that are for adults only. Non-smoker's don't have to support establishment's that allow smoking, but it shouldn't be up to them to tell me how to live my life.

There may also be non-smokers who work in psychiatric hospitals, but I'm sure there are smokers as well. It should be no big deal to have a smoker or two on duty to watch over smokers within the ward. A little bit of common sense and diplomacy go a lot farther than dictatorship.

They just passed a smoking ban in Charleston this past summer. There was a huge conrtoversy. First it was the ban itself, the bar owners downtown, ect. Then it turned to the hubs of people on the sidewalks out for a break.

Personally, I think it's bullshit that the business owners can't choose. I also think it's bullshit that you can't smoke in a place where they don't serve food, children are not allowed, and serves liquor. If it's the employees they are worried about then lets take a poll. Who's life ambition is or was to become a bartender, a bouncer, dancer, waitress, etc? Seriously, if you are going into a place like that are you really that worried about your health?

Man, banning smoking in a mental hospital is a shitty thing to do. It's bad enough to be locked up against your will even if you've never hurt yourself or anyone else, but to then have them take away one of the few pleasures of sitting around all day not doing anything. .. that shit ain't right.

On a side note,
Dear assholes, when you catch a whiff of my cigarette outdoors, don't give me a fucking dirty look you prick. You aren't going to get fucking cancer from occasionally inhaling cigarette smoke, so just go fuck yourself, alright?

Dude, the tobacco companies have finally admitted that their products can and do lead to cancer and other health problems.

So you're suggesting that people in the bar business deserve to be forcibly subjected to cancer-causing toxins throughout their shifts?

You're serious?

um...I believe he was being sarcastic.

Speaking as a life-long nonsmoker who despises the smell of smoke when I'm having a beer, I can nonetheless say with unswerving conviction that I've never come across a public smoker anywhere remotely as annoying as a self-righteous, whiny non-smoker.

No no no, he means that bartenders are suicidal and this is their way of committing the act.

Maybe it's just me, but forcing violent offenders to quit cold turkey seems like a pretty stupid idea. Want to increase violence in prison? Get the inmates more irritable than usual, by forcing them to quit smoking against their will. Awesome!

OFF TOPIC:
I still say rather than forcing bars/restaurants to go completely smoke free it would have been better to at least TRY some sort of reward system for those who go smoke free, or start doing a liquor license type thing but for smoking. I understand where the non-smokers are coming from, but I think we could have found something to please both sides of the argument.

Ok, getting back to the point of the article:
I guess it doesn't bother me that murderers and rapists don't get their cigarettes. They shouldn't get cable either. But the mentally ill? C'mon... be nice, they have enough going on without having nic fits too.

dude how fucked up is that statement. don't look down on people who have any occupation you deem unworthy, its just wrong. i have 2 degrees and 3 diplomas. i choose to bounce because i deem it a job worth doing, and doing right.

ok. ireland has the ban 2 years now, all public buildings pubs & restaurants. i bounce in a pub. and i like the right to have fresh air if i like. im also a part-time smoker and i actually enjoy the atmosphere outside. ireland is one of those unique places where the pub and smoking go hand in hand. everybody socialises in the same area. and as we know all girls that are in the smoking are easier than the ones who don't smoke.

. thats gonna get me killed.

Occupational hazard. No one is forcing them to work there.

Here's a thought: License smoking bars and require ventilation inspections as part of the licensing process. Or... Outlaw nicotine, and then watch how smokers ignore the law because, as we all know, prohibition doesn't work. That and the government would never outlaw one of its biggest cash cows...

If my smoking was causing someone extreme physical discomfort (as in, asthma attacks, not simply a displeasing odour), I'd put it out. If I'm asked politely and I'm indoors, I'll put it out. Now, if it's some self-righteous jerk who gets rude with me, I'll blow smoke in his face. If someone asks me to put it out when I'm outside, I'll say "No" and continue smoking.