The Capital Regional District has approved bylaw amendments that will make playgrounds, parks, playing fields and other public places off-limits for smoking. It鈥檚 a move that further harasses an already-oppressed minority, forcing smokers into dark corners and distant places to pursue their pulmonary pleasures.
There must be a downside, but I can鈥檛 think of any.
As I write, three smokers have gathered beneath our office window to exercise their lungs and are sharing their habit with us. That鈥檚 because they are standing next to the air intake usually reserved for funnelling the crisp, clear, unbreathed diesel fumes from delivery trucks into our workspace.
The smell of tobacco smoke brings back memories, few of them good. The new anti-smoking measures may seem harsh to those who don鈥檛 remember when things were much different, when smoking was allowed almost everywhere.
That I noticed the smell of cigarette smoke drifting through the air vent is a sign of how things have changed. When I first started in this business, smoking was permitted in newsrooms, as it was in most offices. Ashtrays were as much a part of office supplies as typewriters, carbon paper, blue pencils and little cans of rubber cement. (That was when cut-and-paste meant exactly that.)
One reporter was discussing his work-in-progress on pollution, wondering when better measures would be taken to ensure clean air, when another reporter noted that his worst exposure to pollution was the secondhand smoke in the office. The first reporter, a smoker, stopped and stared for a moment, struck by the irony.
鈥淭hat really bothers me,鈥� he said quietly. It was, I believe, the beginning of his decision to quit smoking.
Getting out of the office on assignment was no escape. Municipal council meetings, school board meetings and other events were conducted in rooms blue with tobacco haze. Many days, I would go home with a headache, my clothes reeking of stale smoke.
(Which reminds me of certain misspent periods of my youth when I would ask my mother in amazement: 鈥淗ow did you know I was at the pool hall?鈥�)
Progress came with that almost laughable development, smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants.
鈥淪moking or non-smoking?鈥� really meant: 鈥淒o you want to breathe the cigarette smoke while it鈥檚 fresh, or would you like to wait 30 seconds for it to waft over from the other side of the room?鈥�
Remember smoking sections in airplanes? Hey, that was good for laughs, too. Your only hope was that the lungs of other passengers would filter out some of the contaminants before the fumes reached your seat. I remember a trans-Atlantic flight during which I wished the oxygen mask mentioned in the safety briefing would drop down in front of me so I could get a few breaths of untainted air.
The progress of non-smokers鈥� rights accelerated. I got a job in a workplace where smoking had been banned from the newsroom and hallways, but was still permitted in offices, the cafeteria and a few designated smoking areas.
It helped, but the smell still drifted to most parts of the building. Then the prohibition was tightened to include offices; the inside smoking area was confined to a glassed-off corner of the cafeteria that became known as the Iron Lung.
Smokers could still slip outside through glass doors to the balcony where they could enjoy a view of the mountains. Refreshed, they would step back inside, leaving a nasty mess of cigarette butts outside and exhaling their last puff inside.
Finally, the Iron Lung, its glass yellowed from smoke, was dismantled; smokers were banished to one spot 鈥� a picnic table under the trees in the middle of the parking lot.
I still have a mental image of a few hardy smokers around that forlorn table, huddling against the winter winds, and I wonder if their isolation wasn鈥檛 a bit harsh.
But my pity is tempered by memories of years of enduring a smoking habit I couldn鈥檛 kick, because I wasn鈥檛 the one doing the smoking.
