Smoking Ban in Effect

So, with the ushering in of the New Year 2010, radical change came to North Carolina: a smoking ban in all restaurants and bars. For myself, a displaced New Yorker, this is no big deal. Even in this smoker's paradise, I found myself still going outside to smoke and actively avoiding the bars where smoking was permitted indoors.

There was an underwhelming amount of backlash. I figured for sure these rednecks would be picketing, waving their confederate flags all the way to Raleigh with teabags taped to their trucker hats. "Gubbament can't tell me where and when I can smoke, gawdamit!" I can hear them, now. But, the fact of the matter is, there was very little public upheaval.

What confuses and bewilders me, however, is a smoking ban that went into effect down here a few months back. The Craven Community College campus became smoke free. That's right, no smoking anywhere on campus. Let me see if I can find a campus map to throw up, here. There we go.

Study this map for a moment. Bear in mind, also, that the map is not to accurate scale. We're talking acres, here. Not many, mind you, but still acres. So... the white areas of the map are (by and large) grassy plains devoid of people. You can't smoke there. The parking lots, too, you can't smoke there. This is where the outrage, or at least my outrage comes in. We can't smoke OUTDOORS?! That's one step away from outright prohibition. When you can't smoke outside, where the air is clogged with various pollutants including the occasional waft of hot diaper that comes from the Weyerhauser factory that has our river choked with chemicals and unusable, something is amiss. Yes, the outdoors, where the parking lots on the top of the map (below the Davis maintenance building, which I never knew had a name besides "Maintenance") took a full semester to complete, with bull dozers, backhoes and all variety of polluting machinery ran for all hours for 4+ months to make a GOD DAMN PARKING LOT (flatten land, coat in pavement). That same outdoors was declared smoke free.

But, guess what? They're giving us smokers a gazebo. That's right, we all have to congregate like some sort of bible club for the damned in the 10-15mins between classes suck down a cigarette quick and continue on our ways. It won't be centrally located, mind you. I don't know, exactly, where they're planning to put it, but the way things are run down here, it will be the other side of the aforementioned parking lots, that's where I'm putting my money.