The ban, if enacted, would prohibit smoking in most of
Colorado’s private work areas and in public buildings. Republican
Rep. Mike May, District 44, sponsored House Bill 1175, the Clean
Indoor Air Act. It’s now in the Senate for review, but not yet
calendared as of Friday.

May apparently believes there’s a hazard in secondhand smoke.
That term, secondhand smoke, seems silly doesn’t it? I can’t hold
smoke in my hand. It’s really second-lung smoke, isn’t it? The
smoker breathes it in, exhales it, and I have to breathe
it.

“Endangering the lives of your employees and customers is not
OK,” May said in support of his bill. He acknowledges there’s a
balance to be kept between the rights of property owners and the
rights of those employees and customers who shouldn’t have to
breathe second-lung smoke.

I understand the Colorado Restaurant Association supports the
ban in restaurants. I can understand that. A few nights ago I went
to a restaurant that sells pies, and my wife wanted one. It has
great pies. As I entered the restaurant, a blast of cigarette smoke
hit me in the face. I hadn’t been there recently and it’s
apparently become a haven for smokers as one of the few places that
hasn’t banned the practice. I nearly left right then, but was bent
on fulfilling my mission.

I said to the manager taking my order, “That smoke’s awful. How
can you stand it?” He mumbled an excuse and I didn’t pursue it,
figuring he couldn’t control it anyway. I took my pie
home.

Upon opening it, cigarette smoke had contaminated the box and
the pie. It smelled like an ashtray. Since the pie was expensive, I
returned it for a refund, telling the manager it was inedible due
to the odor.

I’m not a hard, blood-in-the-eye opponent of smoking and
consider it a person’s right to smoke if he or she chooses;
however, I’m repulsed by the smell. It takes very little smoke to
bother me. Even driving down the road behind someone smoking is
bothersome.

I nearly have sympathy for those poor sods who need a smoke so
badly they’ll stand outside a building in the dead of winter
sucking up nicotine in gulps just to make it through the day. I
lose any near sympathy when I have to run the gauntlet of 10 people
lined up on each side of my path, creating a stinking blue haze for
me to penetrate. I don’t like holding my breath as I walk through,
looking neither left nor right. I may have passed a friend without
speaking, but it’s embarrassing to look people in the eye who need
a fix so bad to get through another hour.

I’m retired now, but I resented the heavy smoker who sat beside
me in a cubicle, going outside for his smoke break while I
continued working. He then returned with smoke oozing from his
clothing until he could go for another drag. He wore musk that
perpetuated it and made it all the worse. Finally, I got a spray
can of Ozium, making it obvious I was cleaning the air each time he
returned. No words were exchanged about it, but the unadulterated
stench that he hauled with him throughout the day was
unbearable.

As a young Air Force officer I endured others’ smoke while
trapped in missile holes for 24 hours or captured in airplane
cockpits for 13-hour missions. I hated the unavoidable headaches
from that endless smoke exposure.

So I’m pleased with the possibility of seeing these smoking
restrictions. I take it very personally. I want cigarette smoke as
far from me as possible. If the folks who go to casinos want to
smoke in there, and the Legislature allows it, so be it. I don’t
gamble, nor do I intend to start. Somehow, the stink of cigarettes
complements casinos so I wouldn’t deny them their precious
ambience.

Defenders of smokers’ rights go to extremes to define those
rights, invariably leaving me out of the equation. They’ll claim
there’s never been one death scientifically proven to have been
caused by passive smoking. I don’t care. I lost my verve for
tobacco when my half uncle rolled me a cigar of pure burley tobacco
when I was 8. My friend’s dad caught us smoking and I was never so
glad to be caught in my life.

I don’t like first-lung or second-lung smoke, so I’m hoping the
Senate passes May’s prohibition on indoor smoking.