SMOKING AND THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS

If you would like a textbook lesson in mob rule, reach into your pocket and
take out a cigarette. When your potential executioners are at the point of
apoplexy, take a long, long drag, and blow the most perfect smoke rings
you're capable of.

You know the tide has turned when a nonsmoker like myself is starting to
feel sympathy for cigarette companies. But like the ACLU defending the
Nazi marchers in Illinois, someone has to take a stand for principle.

Tiresome antismoking radio spots, with no rebuttal following, continue to
pollute the otherwise balanced airwaves. Billboards depicting lung-less
cowboys and sarcastic debutantes clog airspace. Then there is the TV
commercial created by the state of California--and obviously financed by
me--that boldly flaunts misleading statistics. After some art-house
footage of a smoking toilet, the commercial triumphantly announces that
54,000 people die annually from secondhand smoke. So there. Case closed.
No smoking in bars for the rest of eternity. We're the government and we're
making the decisions around here.

An Internet investigation revealed the following: There have been 34
studies of the effects of secondhand smoke noted by the Congressional
Research Service and only seven found significant negative health effects.
One actually found benefits. What these studies mean, in the words of the
Economist magazine, "is that the effects are so small as to be hard to pin
down with any certainty at all."

That didn't sound like a scientific slam-dunk to me, so I called a less
predictably sympathetic source: a public health physician at the Rand
Institute. After a few nit-picking comments about the size of the control
group, he told me that yes, indeed, secondhand smoke is nobody's friend,
but to keep in mind that these studies were done on the spouses of
smokers--people who lived with smokers, in the same house, following them
around everywhere. To occasionally lurk in a smoky bar isn't going to make
much difference to your health in the long run.

So why do we have laws about bars and not about homes? In a free society,
you get to choose what payoffs are worth what risks. You get to decide
what a good life is and then promise to shut up if it's over all too
quickly.

A probe of the national psyche is called for. Why is cigarette smoking now
considered the eighth deadly sin? Granted, there is always something
patently annoying about a person who lives a little too close to the edge
and refuses to apologize. Or perhaps it's because smoking conveys a
contempt for the current ethos that holds health as evidence of morality.
Maybe it's the refusal to join in the culture of fear. How dare you, Mr.
Smoker, continue in your evil ways? Don't you think these statistics apply
to you? Do you realize how much time we all spend to convince ourselves
that these years of boredom are going to pay off in 30 additional years of
life--grim, spartan and rife with wheat germ.

Virtue no longer seems to be its own reward: If people have renounced all
of life's pleasures, why aren't they at least getting tipsy on a sense of
their own goodness? Like the neighbors whom you secretly suspect of
calling the police to come break up the party because they weren't invited,
the Health Missionaries recognize it's no fun to be alone.

So stronger action is called for. No, I'm not going to tell you to take up
cigarettes, because then I'll also have to tell you to quit blowing smoke
in my face. But if you let this appalling restriction of freedom come and
go without some sort of response, you are laying the foundation for further
intrusions. Since the antismoking zealots have the public convinced that
bar workers are basically indentured servants shackled to the cash
register, it's only logical that next year they'll be demanding to inspect
our homes, as there may be innocent children or nannies or cleaning people
sitting around breathing.

Soon, all smokers will have to register with the state and unattractive
warning signs will be planted on lawns of those whose homes contain
unacceptable levels of nicotine. Tanning booths, doughnuts and motorcycles
will be next, and inevitably we'll be getting wake-up calls for required
morning exercises with our neighbors while oversized speakers blast out
inspirational lyrics. So the next time that someone asks you if they can
smoke, go ahead and say no, but thank them for trying.

Susan Self Works in Politics. She Lives in Brentwood