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• ATLAS Shrugs: As the city's smoking ban approaches, Mark Lee brings 16 years of holiday-weekend parties to an end 

Mark Lee is not the bogeyman. He is not lurking around the district's many alleys handing out cigarettes to underage teens. But Lee says his opposition to Washington, D.C.'s mandatory smoking ban, which prohibits smoking in all district businesses beginning Jan. 1, 2007, makes the well-known nightlife promoter one of the most misunderstood men in Washington.

''To listen to smoking prohibition groups, you would think I was carrying dead bodies out in trash bags along with the empty beer bottles to throw away at the end of the night,'' says Lee. In reality, Lee does not disagree with health officials who promote non-smoking or healthy lifestyles. He is not an advocate for smoking. But Lee is opposed to the approach that smoking prohibition groups in Washington have taken in enforcing a mandatory smoking ban.

''There's a lot of hype around the so-called 'health and safety issue,''' he says. ''But the stockholders, business manager operators, service professionals, entertainers, musicians, DJs and the vastly overwhelming number of actual patrons in this discussion know that one size doesn't fit all, and the [inability] of [health groups] to educate and persuade more people to stop smoking does not justify forcing us to stop smoking by social engineering.''

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