Take your smoking ban and ...

Hawaii has one of the toughest smoking bans in the United States. Bars and restaurants are flat-out forbidden to decide for themselves whether they'll permit their customers to smoke. Maybe the totalitarian nature of the law made it inevitable that a rebellion would brew -- and that many bar owners would simply refuse to comply.

Customers continue to light up in some Hawaii bars and bar owners are getting increasingly bold in their efforts to challenge and overturn Hawaii's three-month-old anti-smoking law.

Bar owners are taking advantage of an only-in-Hawaii bureaucratic complication that has stopped the state Department of Health from citing violators: while the law bans indoor smoking, the administrative rules giving the state the authority to actually ticket anyone are still being drafted.

As elsewhere, many bar owners cite lost business as the spark to their defiance -- despite the insistence of ban advocates that little or no business will be lost. But other business owners get to the core issue: Choice. They say it's their right to decide on policies for their own businesses, and the government shouldn't intrude.

Anti-smoking crusaders often insist that the ban is for the good of bar and restaurant employees, so they don't have to work in a potentially unhealthy environment, but their intended beneficiaries aren't as grateful as they might hope. In fact, many bar workers prefer working in establishments where smokers are welcome to practice their vices -- and to tip accordingly.

Hawaii's anti-smoking law originally was designed to protect employees and the public from exposure to secondhand smoke. But some employees say it should be left to them to decide what type of environment they want to work in.

"It should be up to the worker if they want to work in a nonsmoking bar or a smoking bar," said Michael Ellis, the manager of Pigskins. "Basically, my tips dropped dramatically. Say I was making $200 a night in tips, now that's down to $50."

So hats off to the tobacco rebels. Here's hoping the rebellion continues to smolder.