Smoking

ROBERT W. CURRAN is getting some razzing at his favorite Monday night haunt, Jerry's Belvedere on York Road. The Baltimore councilman is pushing legislation that would ban smoking in public places, a proposal that bar, restaurant and tavern owners say would torpedo business. But here's how Mr. Curran sees it: City Health Department statistics show that smoking-related illnesses kill far more Baltimoreans than alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs, murder and suicides combined. In Maryland, 8,000 people die annually from smoking-related illnesses.

Responding to an initiative put forth by a student, Western MarylandCollege has established a smoke-free policy for nearly all public areas on the campus.The policy was put into effect April 1, after receiving unanimous recommendation by the All-College and Administrative Councils and final approval by President Robert H. Chambers III.All public areas of the campus have been designated smoke-free zones, with the exception of the enclosed fireplace room in the Decker College Center Pub (the college grille and snack bar, which is open to all community members)

EASTON -- Smokers won a temporary reprieve yesterday when a Talbot County judge delayed the scheduled Aug. 1 start of Maryland's precedent-setting ban on smoking in restaurants, bars, offices and other workplaces.After nearly two hours of arguments, Circuit Judge William S. Horne granted a request for a postponement from lawyers representing tobacco companies and local business owners.The 10-day injunction, which began yesterday, officially expires Aug. 6. But Judge Horne is expected to grant an extension for a second court hearing on Aug. 11 and 12, when broader arguments about the ban will be permitted.

MIAMI -- I'll make this as clear as I can. I hate smoking. Always have. It probably doesn't help that my parents, both smokers, died of cancer, but truth is, I was no fan of the habit even before that. From the time I was a small boy, I considered smoking the filthiest custom imaginable. As a rule, I consider smoking bans one of the precious few signs of intelligent life on earth. It's great to enter the supermarket, the concert hall, the workplace and know I'll be able to breathe, unaffected by someone else's cloud of exhaust.

A regulation banning smoking in virtually every workplace in Maryland will be approved within days and could take effect by spring, a top state official said yesterday.A state advisory board endorsed the ban yesterday, clearing the way for final action, said Licensing and Regulation Secretary William A. Fogle.Mr. Fogle said he would approve the ban -- which he proposed in the first place -- in the next few days.If everything goes as planned, the measure would go into effect in about three months, making Maryland the first state in the nation to ban smoking in almost all workplaces.

Slowly but surely responsible elements of society are closing in on the addictive weed known as tobacco. Restaurants, shopping malls, business offices, most public places ban smoking voluntarily. Now government is getting into the act forcefully.Both federal and state officials concerned with workers' health have proposed bans on smoking in the workplace -- even restaurants and bars. That includes customers, not just employees. The corrosive effects of tobacco smoke, whether directly from a cigarette or indirectly from someone else's, are well established.

Washington. -- When your mother dips Garrett snuff, your father chews any available brand of tobacco and your uncles puff on roll-your-own Bull Durham, you learn as a boy what a disgustingly filthy product tobacco is.Then you find that you're personally allergic to smoke, and you read how many people tobacco kills, and you develop an almost indelible contempt for the people who push it -- especially on children.So you are surprised and pleased that President Clinton, who once seemed terribly timid, has shown guts (and written off the electoral votes of most of the South)

I STARTED smoking in the summer of 1964. I played some mindless game on the boardwalk of Wildwood, N.J., tossing a volleyball onto a collection of muffin tins, and the ball landed on a colored one, and I won a pack of cigarettes.So began a habit that, in the 1960s, was merely a rite of passage into adulthood. I am now in the process of quitting the habit. I say "in the process" because it's turned out to be a rather difficult enterprise, and while I expect to succeed eventually, it's decidedly not much fun. Now I fervently wish that in 1964 on the New Jersey coast I'd played miniature golf that night instead.

It comes as no surprise that Republican gubernatorial candidate Ellen Sauerbrey would rescind the Schaefer administration's toughest-in-the-nation ban on smoking in the workplace. As a consistent conservative, she says this is government regulation "run amok" and insists such a ban should be considered only if it passes legislative muster.But it does raise eyebrows when her Democratic foe, Parris Glendening, also puts up roadblocks against a proposal Attorney General Joseph Curran is fighting in court to uphold.