Smoking Ban Avoidance
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:03 PM

Vice Squad has noted some of the dodges that have been tried in the past -- such as becoming a consulate. But today's Los Angeles Times provides an article (annoying registration possibly required) that is practically a how-to guide for restaurants and other establishments in Nevada to avoid the state smoking ban. The ban does not apply to places that do not serve food -- oh, and it doesn't apply to the gaming floors of casinos, brothels, or strip clubs, either. Nevadans have priorities, after all. So one thing you could do, if you are a restaurant, is to become a brothel, strip club, or casino. But the article recounts less obvious (to me, at least) circumventions. You can break your restaurant into a bar (smoking allowed) and a restaurant (no smoking), where bar patrons can order their food from the physically connected but legally and atmospherically separated restaurant. Other establishments make the division temporally, being restaurant by day, smoke-infested bar by night.

One disgruntled smoker notes that he doesn't like to leave an establishment to have a cigarette: 'It feels like you're a junkie if you go outside to smoke.' He doesn't draw Vice Squad's conclusion: shouldn't junkies be able to indulge indoors legally, too? [Maybe junkies don't want to?: it feels like you're a smoker if you go inside to shoot up.]

Speaking of debauchery, Vice Squad is back from New Orleans, and primed to go on and on about Regulating Vice. I am particularly pleased to report that Regulating Vice made it to number 7 on Amazon's best seller list. Oops, wait, that was actually number 363,704; that's just about 100,000 places behind Ferns For American Gardens. I'm aiming at you, fernsters.

Labels: Nevada, smoking ban