The Last Straw: Galway's short-lived rebellion against the smoking ban made headlines around the world. I know this because I read about it in a local newspaper while driving across the Rocky Mountains between Washington and Montana, a very remote part of the US, writes Frank McNally.
(I wasn't reading the newspaper and driving at the same time, although given Montana's relaxed traffic laws, this would hardly be illegal.) Galway seemed a very far away place in the reports, and details were sketchy. It was like reading about a small independence movement somewhere in Indonesia. You half-expected to hear President Bush had promised to send troops in support of the freedom-loving insurgents, and their uprising against the repressive Dublin regime.
So, visiting the strife-torn enclave of Eyre Square this week, I was surprised by the peaceful atmosphere there. Cigarettes rather than resentment smouldered among the handful of customers standing outside Fibber Magee's on Wednesday night. Elsewhere, hundreds of apparently happy smokers clogged the arteries of Quay Street and High Street, filling the warm night air with nicotine.
The weather may have been an influence on the relative calm. So far this week, conditions have been balmy in the western capital. But as I write, soon after dawn on Thursday, an Atlantic rain-belt has swept in over Salthill, pounding last night's cigarette butts into mulch on the streets and pavements. If the deluge persists, there are fears that the city could turn ugly after dark.
In the meantime, as this column warned months ago, summer is exposing a basic flaw in the ban. Nobody wants to see smokers suffer unnecessarily (okay, maybe just a bit). But you couldn't help thinking last night that they were enjoying themselves a little too much in the open air - which was mostly smoke, anyway - while the alleged beneficiaries were stuck indoors.
My suggestion that the no-smoking areas should be switched outdoors whenever the temperature tops 200, forcing cigarette users inside during warm weather, is probably too radical. But I predict there could yet be legal challenges over passive smoking in the open air.
Take the two gardaí stationed on the corner of Quay Street on Wednesday night, for example, to prevent breaches of the peace. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that there was smoking in their workplace.
Passive smoke inhalation was also a big problem in Washington, by the way; but not from cigarettes. The state was hosting two major forest fires when we passed through, one of them requiring the attentions of 900 fire-fighters. If you were looking for a no-smoking area in central Washington earlier this month, they had to direct you towards Canada.
July is forest-fire season in the US, which is a giant tinderbox at this time of year. And just to make things interesting, July is also the month when Americans celebrate their independence by setting off pyrotechnical devices! Sometimes in wooded areas! We watched the independence celebrations in a place called Lake Chelan, where different communities take turns to mount firework displays. Lake Chelan was also close to the larger of the forest fires, which had just appeared over the ridge of the nearby mountains the day we arrived. So as we watched the fireworks in the town across the lake, large flames licked the skyline on the mountains to our left, threatening the neighbourhood. It was nearly too much entertainment for one evening.
An added twist to the tale is provided by the fact that firework sales are illegal in large parts of the US. In Washington, most people buy them from Indian reservations, which are sovereign and not subject to state laws.
Indians have been selling fireworks to non-Indians since King George was a teenager. (I know this for a fact because I read an interview in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer with a member of the Muckleshoot Tribe called Warren King George, which included the sentence: "Since King George was a teenager, the Indians have been selling fireworks.") But the reservations have also used their independence to provide the white man with much-needed legal gambling opportunities, such as the popular Muckleshoot Casino. And inevitably, they found they could make even more money by selling him cigarettes exempt from state taxes. This was a step too far for the authorities which, acting on independent scientific evidence that tax-free cigarettes are very bad for a government's health, began sending urgent smoke signals to tribe leaders.
The result is that at least some of the reservations now impose the equivalent of state taxes, with the money going to reservation funds. But even so. Between promoting gambling, tobacco, and the use of fireworks in high summer, the Indians could win yet.