Winter 98/99 Volume IV Issue 1

A pipe smoking friend, one of three smoking partners in an insurance brokerage large enough to occupy an entire floor of a Wall Street office building, recently paid a $350 fine for smoking his pipe in his private office with the door closed. That was after a surprise visit from the New York City Department of Health, who determined from "evidence," and a denunciation from a disgruntled ex-employee, that a violation of purity laws had occurred.

Apparently, you can smoke alone in your office with the door closed, and can even have up to two visitors present, as long as they assent to the smoking. If there are three visitors, even if all are smoking, that's not allowed, because for more than three smokers to occupy a room, the area must be made into a "designated" smoking room (for that purpose only).

Our pipe smoking friend, moreover, cannot sit in his cigar smoking partner's office and puff away when his partner is out, because you can only smoke in your own office. The partner would have to be present if you want to sit in his office and he must assent to the fumes. In a greater show of sense, the health police ruled that all three partners, cannot sit in their own conference room for a meeting and smoke their respective pipe, cigar, and cigarette - when no one else is there but the three smokers - because the conference room is deemed a public area, even when the door is closed and not a single non-smoker is present.

In addition to determining that the three partners were in serious violation of the above mentioned laws of purity, the smoking gestapo observed that there were ashtrays on a couple of desks in the main office area. These are used occasionally by two part time night clerks who make data entries in the wee hours when no one else is present. They were clearly doing something absolutely verboten, even though said ashtrays were clean and no one, especially not the daytime gestapo, saw these nighttime clerks blowing smoke.

So, $350 later - "it would have cost $3500 to fight the fine," said my pipe smoking friend - the gestapo was temporarily appeased. They did return once unannounced and cautioned the broker that, although he was puffing his pipe alone in his office, the door was open a hairline, and that constituted an infraction they'd overlook this time, but not again. Clearly he had narrowly avoided concentration camp.

This is a cautionary tale of how a Wall Street generator of tax revenue for the city, state, and nation, an employer of hundreds who support thousands, chose to pay the tribute money to the guardians of purity, rather than risk endless harassment, loss of time, and enormous sums. Only one example, with countless variations and repetitions, of the authoritarian state arrogating to itself the right to protect us from ourselves. Your tax dollars at work!

More examples and some scary stuff can be found in Jacob Sullum's FOR YOUR OWN GOOD: THE ANTI SMOKING CRUSADE AND THE TYRANNY OF PUBLIC HEALTH (Free Press, 1998), and in his article inside this issue of SMOKE.

Good reading, happy holidays, and our best wishes for some great smoke in the coming year. Please write to let us know how you feel about various issues confronting smokers.

Alan Schwartz
Associate Publisher
Editorial Director, PipeSMOKE
130 West 42nd Street, Suite #1050
New York, NY 10036
tel: 212-391-2060
fax: 212-827-0945
e-mail: pipesmoke@smokemag.com