THEY'LL HUFF IF YOU PUFF

As MPs and the medical establishment lobby for a ban on lighting up in
public, a committed Marlboro man joins a lonely ban of pariahs in one of
America's smoke-free towns

IT'S NOT the welcome I want. But, if I'm honest, it's the one I expect. The
drive along Interstate 95 from New York City has been long and stressful.
After five hours behind the wheel, I plug a Marlboro between my lips, cup
my hands against the icy wind, light a match and inhale deeply.

As I exhale, I catch the eye of a man in late middle age walking a little
yappy dog. With obvious disapproval, he catches my eye, then alters course
to give me and my cigarette a wide berth. He then explodes into an extra
noisy pretend-cough, the sort that non-smokers never manage to perfect,
followed an audible "tut-tut". This is the greeting you get when you're a
nicotine addict in Brookline, Massachusetts.

I don't like to call myself a heavy smoker, but I am. And it is for this
reason - I hate to use the word sadism, but it does keep popping into my
mind - that The Times has sent me to this Boston suburb. Brookline is a
smoke-free town: since 1996 the law has stated that you may smoke only in
your own home or in the street. But nowhere else - not in bars,
restaurants, hotels. Not even on all the streets - smoking is forbidden on
pavements where restaurants have tables outside.

Brookline was a pioneer, but the totalitarianism spread fast. By 1998 it
was illegal to smoke in Californian bars and restaurants. Utah and Maine
restaurants have been smoke-free since 1997 and 1999 respectively. In a
fortnight Boston's health commission votes on whether to ban public smoking
in the main city. And Delaware's public-smoking ban takes effect today. In
Europe there are restrictions on smoking in the pubs, bars and restaurants
of Bulgaria, Finland, Iceland and Hungary, among other places.

Banning tobacco in restaurants I can understand. No one wants smoke blown
over them when they eating. And in church I can see that it is common
courtesy to wait at least until the service is over before lighting up. But
pubs are different. Pubs are supposed to stink of smoke. If you don't like
smoke, don't go there. Simple.

Smokers are a rare species in Brookline. Even so, the occasional puffer can
be spotted, if one waits quietly near the doorway of a bar, restaurant or
shop. Eventually a pale, frost-bitten wretch with a wheezy chest will
emerge sheepishly into the cold, like a sickly arctic vole under
surveillance by David Attenborough.

"Big Brother is always watching, man," says Alan Balsam, Brookline's
Commissioner of Public Health, who enforces the ban with glee. "Perhaps I
shouldn't say that," he reconsiders. "We want to work together with
establishments and smokers to make this work."

But it is too late; he has let the cat out of the bag. The ageing hippy,
who punctuates every half-sentence with the word "man", is an enemy of
freedom, an enemy of cigarettes and, as such, an enemy of mine.

He flicks his long, grey hair and reminds me that now would be as good a
time as any to give up. But I can't really hear him. I want a cigarette, I
can't have one and it's his fault. "You know, man, you are free to smoke in
your home or outside. Just not in the workplace or public spaces, or on
some sidewalks, man," says Balsam, a former smoker (how did you guess?).

I make my way to the town's only real tobacconist's shop, where I find an
extraordinary sight: a group of men are huddled at the counter, smoking
huge cigars. The store has become a refuge, akin to the speakeasies where
illegal hooch was drunk during Prohibition. But in allowing the small group
of refugees to smoke, the owner, Michael Wilner, could be hit with a big fine.

"I'm a police officer and I don't think they should be wasting their time
with this," says Bill Miller, a regular customer who rolls the first of
four or five daily stogies around his mouth. "I mean, talk about low
priorities."

"They want to put us out of business," says Wilner. "It's the liberals.
They are all nice when they want to save the boat people, but they want to
get rid of us. You know the type. Nice as pie, but light a cigarette or put
a scratch on their Volvo - then you'll see the shit hit the fan."

Aengus O'Leary owns O'Leary's, on the border between Boston and Brookline.
He was worried back in 1996 that his customers would defect across the city
boundary because of the smoking ban. "There was a drop-off at first," he
says, "but it soon picked up. To be honest, banning smoking is just another
regulation. If it's not the taxman, then it's weights and measures or
whatever. Complying with regulations is something you get used to in this
business."

Wilner does not feel nearly so comfortable."Since this ban was enforced,
they will not leave us alone. They sent a 17-year-old kid in here, a
set-up. He was wearing dark glasses and I sold him cigarettes. As soon as
he walked out the door they ran in with TV cameras from Channel 5 news.
It's ridiculous."

In the drug store down the street, the cigarette display behind the counter
is empty. Instead of rows of cardboard packets, a red notice explains that
the store has been banned from selling cigarettes for a week after a
similar sting operation. The ban is said to have cost the store about
$4,000 (AUKP2,560) in sales.

As the British Medical Association and a growing number of MPs lobby for a
similar cigarette ban in the UK, they should take heed of the lifestyles
and livelihoods that have been lost in Massachusetts. We may stink and we
may wheeze and we may knowingly inflict all kinds of hideous diseases upon
ourselves, but leave us our pubs so we don't add frostbite to our ills. And
don't make us live in Mr Balsam's village of the damned.