Tobacco.org

Pipe smokers huff and puff about smoking ban  

"How would you like it if you went to a wine tasting and you couldn't taste the wine?" asked the 53-year-old Denver resident. "It's a freedom issue."

On Thursday, pipe aficionados learned that their attempts to allow smoking inside the Pheasant Run convention center, where some 4,000 were expected to linger over tables laid out with aromatic tobacco and intricately carved briar pipes Saturday and Sunday, had gone up in smoke.

The group had sought, with the help of its attorney members, to get around the state smoking ban that went into effect in January by arguing that the event was essentially a private club meeting. . . .

The hall is strictly staffed with volunteers, convention-goers were to pay $15 to join the club, and attendees were to sign a waiver stating they "freely and willingly accept all the risks of smoking, second-hand smoke, third-hand smoke, and all other risks, both real and imagined, regarding smoking tobacco."

But St. Charles police, DuPage County health officials and anti-smoking advocates didn't buy it. . . .

"I've been thrown out of nine restaurants and three bars in Saginaw because of a pipe," Michigan resident Brad Benard, 58, said after lighting his corncob pipe. "But this is a new low."

Anti-smoking forces "just keep grinding us down," said Reg Stevens, 65, who flew in from Birmingham, England, for the convention and planned to compete in Sunday's pipe-smoking contest.

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