It's been 5 months since the state's new smoking ban has been in effect in Illinois. Stale beer and cheap cologne now fill the porous woodwork of taverns once subjected to the sickly, stagnant dew of nicotine clouds, and domineering presence of the tobacco-tainted aura of a day whose time has past. One might be compelled to ask, is this the new order of the day? Or is it just the calm before the storm?

The bar where I drink, like every business in Chicago, adheres to the new law. Smokers stand outside, inhale what they can, then return to sip their drinks and watch the game, shoot some pool, or gripe about ...among other things... “The Law.”

While most people in the city accept the smoking restrictions, some bar patrons are feeling singled out, discriminated against or, as consensus has it, “made to feel like second-class citizens.” Similar bans are taking effect across the nation as well as in most of Europe. While most people in this neighborhood tavern take it in stride, they question why there is no place set aside where smokers can congregate indoors, rather than just get pushed to the street.

Kathy works the night shift. She's a small, feisty woman in her mid-twenties who packs 300 pounds of Irish pride into her 90-pound frame. She quit smoking three years ago but started again last summer - but only when she can bum one off a customer. “As someone who works in a bar and who's exposed to second-hand smoke for hours a day, I can tell you that I think smoking is disgusting,”. She said. “However in the 40 some odd days since the smoking ban has taken effect, I have seen a pretty big hit in the amount of money that I make in tips. The bar itself has been fine, but I can honestly say that the majority of nonsmokers are far less generous than smokers. My wallet has taken a great hit, and it is getting more difficult to make ends meet. I wish all the nonsmokers that have been looking out for me would please stop. I would rather make my money than be in a smoke-free environment. Smokers on average are nicer and more considerate and much more generous. I lost a few good customers, and could use them back.”

Dave, who sits in his stool sipping a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is a smoker, he disagrees with Kathy: “I’m happy, I've cut my smoking in half.” Dave is a regular, most times of the day he can be found in the bar, running errands, mopping up, or just contemplating Chicago sports with the rest of the bars patrons. This is where it starts to get interesting as more people join the conversation.

“I've been smoking since I was 13, I'll probably smoke until I die, if my smoking bothers, or could hurt somebody, I'll smoke outside.” True to his word Dave pulls a Marlboro out of a pack, and walks outside, checking his pockets for a lighter as he walks out the door.

The bar now takes on a different tone; an issue has been raised, what better way to resolve an issue than over drinks at the neighborhood watering hole? Bill's is a retired mailman. He left the post office two years ago and has been a fixture in the bar ever since. “I don't know what all the fuss is about. So you go in your car and have a smoke, it's a little inconvenient, but it's probably a lot healthier.”

The Blackhawks just lost the game on the television. A cheap goal in the shootout gets the bars blood boiling. With the game over, a surge heads for the door, full drinks still on the bar. The conversation though deals not with the cheap shot by the Phoenix player, but the rights of smokers, and the rights of non-smokers. Now the table was set: Angry smokers, alcohol, and a hockey game. Who could ask for more? Traffic continues in and out of the bar, napkins placed on drinks; the new-age signal for, I'm out having a smoke. Traffic noises from the outside now blend in with the low playing juke box, and soft volume of the television.

Big John, the quiet giant who usually sits at the end of the bar had just gotten off his cell phone. He drinks Elijah on the rocks because beer won't leave a mark on his 280 pound torso. “Hello!? What do you got to do to get a drink here? Where the hell is everyone?”

His wife, Gina, brought John up to date on the hockey game as well as the dispute on smoking. To which John replied,

“They going on about that again? If you are truly concerned about 'public health,' then you should ban tobacco altogether. After all, if smokers are not welcome anywhere in public anymore, they will smoke more at home, right? That's what you wanted, right? What about the smoker’s kids? You obviously don't care about them at all. You are free to get up and leave a public place if the atmosphere is not to your liking, but those kids can't leave. So this is what it's come down to, a big fat lie about public health and second-hand smoke. It's really all about personal comfort and nothing else. But in order to hold up in court, it has to be about health. Lift the ban on bars and keep it in restaurants that only make sense. I go up to my cabin in Wisconsin now just about every weekend since the ban. I count the smokers and nonsmokers at every bar I go to up there, and it's usually about 75 percent smokers. That’s just not right. Otherwise, I should demand a ban on that woman sitting next to me on the train, whose perfume was so heavy that I was getting dizzy from the fumes. Or I should demand that obese people be forced to eat in a different room of the restaurant, so I am not forced to watch them shovel another 10,000 calories into their mouths and wash it down with a Diet Coke, or a time limit on how long Kathy can stay out and smoke her damn cigarette, while I'm dying over here. I thought she quit!”

John seems to be the voice of legal reasoning at the bar. It's mentioned that he sued his son on Judge Mathis over parking tickets, and won. When the judge stated that “he was a good father and set a fine example for other fathers,” this gave John a certain celebrity status, and when he speaks people listen.

Gina was watching the television and probably missed every word John said, although she might have argued over the perfume comment. Marcello heard it though. “I'm tired of a certain portion of the population being singled out by the majority. Not just smokers, but in other things as well. It's sad. The Constitution was supposed to protect the minority, but instead it is used to ram the wishes of the majority down everyone's throat. This is a prime example of that. I wonder who the next minority will be. I hope the next ban doesn't affect me.”

Marcello's been a citizen for ten years; he came here from Ecuador when he was in his early twenties, and “loves America.” He paraphrases an old poem with certain substitutions: “They come to take the smokers; I don't smoke, so I don't say nothing.”

His reference was to a poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller called First they came…" in which a man notices everybody around him being taken away while he said nothing, until they came for him, and there was no one left to speak for him.

Throughout the evening, arguments fly back and forth , pro and con, Big John relates how he and Dave were sitting in his Blazer, smoking, and a cop pulled up to see what they were doing. “They make you feel like a criminal for obeying the law, and the worst part is we pay them to do it. Smokers and drinkers are the highest-taxed people in the state. If you smoke a pack a day, that's about $28 a week in taxes alone. That's more than my property tax on my cabin”

Kathy backs up Johns drink and Gina adds, “Even though I am a smoker, I understand the rights of a non smoker. But as smoker I feel that it is just one more thing that government now has control of for me.

“They tax me on my property, my license plates, my groceries and paycheck, she said. “Now slowly they will take away rights. Now the only place I can smoke is my home and in my car. I already pay more for insurance on my car and home because I am a smoker, also on my health insurance and life insurance. I have paid my taxes on each pack of cigarettes I have smoked. I wonder if people who are overweight and had to pay a tax for every pound they are? And then someone should ban them from fast food eateries, after all it is for their health. That would not happen because it is their right to kill themselves slowly with high blood pressure and diabetes. And again it is their choice. I am so glad that the government is concerned with my health that they have banned my right to choose, not to mention how many people who drink and drive make that choice everyday, I am just a smoker who has no rights to choose. I guess a large over weight drunk driver has more rights then I do.”

Bob brings up an article he read in the paper a while back; “In China they're trying to get restaurants to go smoke free for the Olympics, one of their biggest chains is going bankrupt now after they put in a smoking ban, because the Chinese people won't go there if they can't smoke, they just go across the street to the other place that welcomes them.” John laughs and reaches for his cigarettes, walking towards the door he says, “Maybe we should move to China.” Bob says, “What, and leave this democracy?”

Dave sits down and mentions a hookah bar that recently opened down the street. “If you want a place to smoke go there.” Kathy offers, “That's just like the city, they make it so you can't smoke where you drink, then open a place where you can't drink where you smoke. Maybe we should move to China, the way things are going pretty soon they're going to have more rights there than we have here.” She than makes an off-colored comment on “tipping and China” as the conversation turns to the way the Blackhawks got the game stolen from them.

As for the nonsmoker’s point of view, if there were any in the bar, they remained quiet. One might only imagine they remained more comfortable watching the smokers blowing off steam, and then blowing out smoke.