I should be dead.

        The way some people tell it, exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke is a sure-fire ticket to terminal lung cancer.      If that's the case, I never should've made it past the age of five, what with two parents and a sister who smoked CONSTANTLY in our Sheboygan duplex.       A blue pall contjnuously hung in our home,  and my clothes always smelled of freshly burned Herbert Tarrytons (my folks liked their darts without filters, thank you).

         I grew up in an era during which EVERYONE smoked, and when you could see cigarette commercials on television, sometimes with our favorite cartoon characters doing the pitch.    Honest.

           Then came the Surgeon General's report on smoking, and the gradual decline of the cigarette culture.       Ads vanished, as did smokes from t-v studios, shows and movies.     Even candy cigarettes went away.    Anti-smoking campaigns accelerated, targeting not just smokers but those who were submitted to second hand smoke.      

          Then came the workplace/hotel/restaurant/tavern bans, the latest of which starts in Wisconsin in July 2010.

         You might think I'm a smoker, from everything I've said so far.     I'm not, but having grown up the way I did, I can't say I'm among the militantly intollerant who think that even looking at a pack of Salems causes cancer of the eyeballs.      

         My inner libertarian says "no more nanny state" and "let the people decide" when it comes to public smoking.      If you don't like a smoke-filled restaurant, fine: go somewhere that doesn't allow cigarettes.      The free market will even everything out, and we'll all be happy.

        I've come to accept that what Madison did this week HAD to be done, if nothing else to level the playing field.      Wisconsin was a patchwork of municipal laws targeting smokers--some communities had bans, others didn't.        It wasn't the free market doing the deciding, but rather geography.      Not good.       Most bar and tavern owners I talked to wanted the change so that everyone would be competing with the same set of guidelines.       A few wanted the state to be the bad guy--so that when a customer complained about not being able to fire one up, the proprietor could merely blame Madison while pulling the ashtrays off the bar.    

       Times change.      People used to eat fatty meals three times a day, some of them in restaurants during three-martini lunches with a pack of smokes at the elbow.

        You can still do all of the above, with the exception of the cigarettes.     They have to stay home.

        With Fred and Barney.