ONCE AMERICA was in thrall to the Marlboro Man. The hard-smoking cowboy, staring moodily from his horse at a far-off horizon, symbolised a certain kind of freedom and – not coincidentally – helped to sell millions of cigarettes.
Now America’s smokers are groaning – or maybe that should be wheezing – under a flood of new measures designed to make them give up or, at least, to drive the habit from public view.
New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced plans to try to ban smoking in the city’s public parks, adding to the 2002 ban on smoking in offices, restaurants and bars. That would see the Big Apple take on one of the most ambitious urban anti-smoking bans in the world, forbidding its citizens from lighting up in hundreds of parks and 14 miles of beaches.
The New York move however is just the tip of an iceberg of anti-smoking policies spreading across the country in a variety of arenas, ranging from rental cars to the army to people’s homes.
From next month, Avis and Budget will be the first major American car rental companies to ban smokers from puffing away in their vehicles, charging cleaning fees of up to $250 for those who flout the rules. Chicago has already taken its ban outside by forbidding smoking on beaches and playgrounds.
In California, the small city of Belmont just outside San Francisco has even banned it in apartment buildings. Perhaps the biggest recent shock has been a study commissioned by the Pentagon that said smoking should be banned in the military.
Yet it is still New York that is on the frontline of America’s anti-smoking wars. The city has a reputation for hard partying, tolerance of different lifestyles and individualism, yet Mr Bloomberg has successfully made the city’s smokers one of the few social groups it is considered acceptable to ostracise. – (Guardian service)