Smoking Bans: It's Gone Too Far and It's All My Fault

Police can now pull you over and fine you if you are smoking in your car with a minor passenger. And that's my fault.

Back in the early 1980s, a couple of wacky communities in Northern California banned smoking in public buildings. No one took notice. Then I received a research assignment.

The client, a hospital, wanted to implement a company policy that would allow the client to fire any employee seen smoking anywhere. Why? Some administrator decided that the hospital should set an example for the community.

The logic was fairly simple. We're health care professionals. Smoking causes cancer. Cancer kills. If you work for us and we see you smoking on your front porch, or at the bowling alley, or walking to church on Sunday, etc., you are setting a bad example so we're going to fire you.

The assignment came from a health fanatic partner and he picked me because I was a rabid chain smoker. The logic here was simple too. If anyone in the firm was going to take this client request seriously, it would be me.

This was in 1983 (or thereabouts). Remember 1983? You could smoke anywhere. ANYWHERE! I, for one, had ashtrays strategically located in those areas of the firm library that I frequented regularly. Partners left trails of ash clumps from their cigars as they walked from their corner office to reception to greet clients. We smoked in airplanes for god's sake.

OK, back to the client and its thesis: health care professionals should set an example. My first thoughts were, the food preparers who worked for the hospital weren't health care professionals, the cleaners who mopped the floors weren't ... . And outside of work!!!

Back then I used to be (or thought I was) a pretty good researcher. I researched this issue every reasonable way I could. I then tried every alternative angle I could conceive. In the end, I went to the partner's office (smoking and intentionally doing so) to tell him that the client could implement the policy. There was not a speck of authority from anywhere saying the client couldn't.

"People who smoke with children present in the confined space of a car or truck might as well be deliberately trying to kill their children." Bangor City Councilor Patricia Blanchette, who is a smoker.AP See also New York Times.

So the hospital did it. The policy was announced to the workforce and the public. It made the Wall Street Journal! And not just anywhere in WSJ, the feature was published on the front page at the top of the far left column, the prime news slot. That, dear readers, started the ball rolling. Corporate America stepped up to the plate restricting and ultimately banning smoking in the workplace (because it saved them money in health care costs; this was at the beginning of the "cost containment" era).

Government bodies joined the pack. They banned smoking in government buildings. Then required smoke-free areas in privately owned public buildings. Then banned smoking 1,000 feet from the entrance to any public-owned building. Then completely banned smoking in privately owned public buildings. In bars, for god's sake. And now, your car.

If you're a smoker shivering in the cold sitting on a park bench three blocks from work, it's all my fault. Sorry about that. Can you feel my pain from holding in this confession for over 20 years? Oh, by the way, after having quit for six years, I'm back to smoking two packs a day. -- Joe Hodnicki