20 Jan 2006
As Smoke Clears, Tobacco Maker Opens Lounge

Of course, the anti-smoking activists are complaining:

Some antismoking advocates nationally said they worried that the Chicago store might mark a new front in the tobacco industry's efforts to market their products as glamorous, particularly to a young, cutting-edge audience, despite efforts by the industry to comply with a 1998 settlement agreement with scores of states that limits advertising.

And, as noted in the National Review Online, the real goal is getting plainer and plainer:

Worried that measures to limit smoking don't go far enough, Elk Grove Village officials are considering banning the sale of cigarettes, apparently the first time that has been seriously proposed in Illinois, experts said. Mayor Craig Johnson said the village would be hypocritical to consider a current proposal to restrict smoking in bars and restaurants without going after cigarettes themselves. "If we think smoking is so detrimental to the community that we should ban it, then we should think about a ban on selling cigarettes," Johnson said Wednesday after formally proposing the idea Tuesday to the Village Board.

What makes you think they're going to stop at cigarettes? We're headed down a slippery slope to a society where everything that's not forbidden is compulsory...

In Chicago, a subsidiary of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company is opening an upscale tobacco lounge just as a smoking ban has taken effect.

(link) [New York Times]

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