All the world's a (smoky) stage

From Minnesota, via the Associated Press:

A new state ban on smoking in restaurants and other nightspots contains an exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some bars are getting around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume, and pronouncing them "actors."

Customers are apparently pretty enthusiastic about the clever workaround. They're wearing wild outfits, staging skits, putting on accents and -- most important -- they're going to the bars that are using the loophole.

Proving anew there's no business like show business, Anderson said her theater-night receipts have averaged $2,000 - up from $500 right after the ban kicked in. Similarly, Bauman said revenue at The Rock dropped off 30 percent after the ban took effect, then shot back up to normal once the bar began allowing smoking again.

I don't expect the "theatrical productions" will be a long-term solution; legislators will, no doubt, tighten the law as best they can, and enforcers will simply start citing bars, no matter what the law says.

But the costumed rebellion, replete with enthusiastic customers happily puffing on their cigarettes, makes it clear that there is a strong constituency for allowing bars and their patrons to work out their own smoking rules. When bars are packed to the rafters with happy scofflaws, lawmakers can't claim to be doing patrons any favors.

Of course, prohibitionists have stumbled across that little hurdle to their efforts, so they've largely abandoned claims to be helping bar and restaurant customers, and now claim to be the friends of the waiters and bartenders. The American Lung Association makes that argument explicitly on its Web page dedicated to the glories of the smoke-free workplace.

Separating smokers from nonsmokers, cleaning the air and ventilating buildings cannot eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke. Smokefree workplace policies are the only effective way to eliminate exposure.

Nobody, however, seems to have asked the workers whether they want or need protection. Some are smokers themselves, many certainly appreciate the tips that come with a room full of happy customers and those most offended by smoke are unlikely to take work in a smoky establishment to begin with.

So we're left with laws intended to prevent people from smoking, sponsored and passed by intolerant folks who aren't subject to the effects of the practice themselves, but who are apparently offended that anybody could want to indulge in the vice.

Who's acting out now?