The adult lifestyle of Virginians, the ones who enjoy killing time in their favorite watering hole, smoking tobacco as they sip on an alcoholic beverage, took a hit last week. In case you had the flu or were traveling abroad, on December 1 the new statewide crackdown on smoking in most restaurants took effect.
An exception is allowed if the eatery/bar has a separate room for smokers. That room must have its own air supply. An exception can also be made if the place is a private club, not open to the public.
Which may spawn a new wave of private smoking clubs, both legit and underground.
The prohibition of alcohol consumption in the Roaring Twenties created an underground culture in which speakeasies flourished. You had to know somebody to get in. Now the tobacco smoking ban in public places is likely to do the same thing.
No one should be surprised to see a burgeoning of new wave speakeasies in Fan District basements. The smartest operators should locate close to existing clusters of restaurants. That way a customer at the Bamboo or Curbside can slip down the street for a quick smoke break in the speakeasy smoking club, then go back to the restaurant.
These new underground joints will serve beer, in some cases right out of coolers. They’ll pours shots. The fancy places might even serve highballs. No blender drinks.
Back in the Bamboo, if you’re unlucky enough to get caught by the authorities smoking a cigarette, you will be cited and fined $25. At least, that’s my understanding of how it will work.
We’re told Richmond’s health inspectors will monitor the local restaurants’ compliance with twice-a-year inspections. Beyond that scant scrutiny, is Richmond going to hire new police officers, kind of like meter maids, to patrol the pubs? Or, will busting smokers be added to the duties of the personnel already on the job?
Or, what?
Just wait until somebody gets mugged, or worse, at roughly the same time a neighborhood-patrolling cop is in a restaurant two blocks away, writing a $25 smoking ticket. Muggers might even keep an eye out for cops going into bars, knowing the coast will be clear for the next ten minutes.
What is bound to happen is that this new law will need lots of willing dime-droppers to actually make it work. Unless there's going to be a whole new battalion of cops assigned to cigarette patrol, enforcement of the no-smoking law is going to depend mostly on citizens at the ready to call in complaints with their cell phones.
Just imagine the kind of scenes this strategy has the potential to cause:
At 5:30 p.m. you are sitting alone in a booth in a Fan District dive. Just as a bulky stevedore seated at the bar fires up a Marlboro, your cell phone buzzes in your pocket.
You chuckle, remembering you saw two people defiantly smoking in another restaurant during your lunch break downtown. You answer the call.
It’s your squeeze telling you she’s going to be another 10 minutes late. Ten seconds later, as you say, "OK … goodbye," you notice the cigarette smoker on the barstool is staring at you.
You don’t know the guy. Nor do you want to, so you avert your eyes.
But it’s too late. Uh, oh.
The smoker, who stumbles as he closes the gap between his barstool and you, growls, "Hey, you. Yeah, you!"
The puffed up lout accuses you of calling the cops on him. Sliding deeper into the booth, you deny it.
The next thing you know the fool is grabbing at your cell phone. Pathetically, you try to explain that it was just your girlfriend calling. He’s not buying it.
The late-arriving bartender tries to pull the paranoid smoker away, but ...
Sometimes, the unintended consequences of new laws or governmental policies can be bizarre.
Of course, some of Virginia’s barstool regulars have used the deadline to bolster their resolve to quit smoking. After all, there are plenty of reasons to call cigarette smoking a nasty habit. I quit 30 years ago.
Yet, with my understanding of this new law to limit tobacco smoking, I can’t tell who is being protected from the smoke. Is Virginia trying to protect the smokers, themselves? Or, are we trying to protect customers in a restaurant from secondhand smoke? Or, is this measure designed to protect restaurant workers from secondhand smoke?
It seems to me it’s such a half-step it doesn’t do all that good a job on any of the three.
No doubt, protecting children from secondhand smoke is a righteous cause. But if minors are to be allowed in a restaurant’s separate smoking room, provided the room has its own air supply, this new ban doesn’t even appear to protect kids.
Soon, this new anti-smoking move by the General Assembly will probably be tested in court. I won’t be surprised if a bewildered judge finds that the ban on smoking in restaurants, as it is now, is virtually unenforceable.
Meanwhile, smoking speakeasies, for as long as they last, will mean new jobs. Which will be a good thing for the people who’ve been working at nicotine-stained saloons that the smoking ban is going to put out of business.
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