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August 22, 2002 9:00 a.m. A Bite Out of the Freedom Apple Eszterhas, Bloomberg, and their mutual war.

own here in tobacco country we're reading the news from New York with much interest. The mayor wants to ban smoking from all bars and restaurants, along with office buildings, gardens, clubs, arena, bowling alleys, pool halls — just about everywhere you can think of outside the home, which is surely next. He's got support from the city's leading daily, which would have us believe that it's all about freedom but which scolds with all the furor of Aunt Polly with a belly full of gin. We're feeling bad for New Yorkers, whose freedoms are under attack not only from without but from within.

It is after all more than a little embarrassing to have your lives managed to this degree. This is the sort of rule teenagers might have to put up with, and perhaps the residents of old-age homes, who might accidentally set their oxygen tanks on fire. To have the mayor tell a city of millions that not a single one of them can smoke when they go out to a bar is a humiliation.

The mayor's motive is the Greater Health: Second-hand smoke, he argues, endangers people who work in these places. This is a questionable proposition to begin with, but even if the danger were established beyond a doubt, people should still be able to smoke in bars, poolrooms, etc. If a person doesn't like the environment, he or she should simply avoid it.

Most of us avoid environments we don't like, including bars and restaurants — but not because of smoke. It's the music that keeps us away: They play their stereos too loud, even during afternoon hours. I would much rather sit near a smoker (or, for that matter, a barking dog) than beneath a blaring speaker, even if I like the music. You can usually talk the dog into shutting up. The speaker is impervious.

Similarly, people avoid other environments where behavior or conversation is not to their liking, whether that place is a movie theater, comedy club, church, or strip joint. They don't want to pollute their minds with whatever's on tap.

America has flirted with tobacco bans here and there, and public smoking has been outlawed in many states in the past. Aunt Polly, like the poor, we always have with us. The current surge reflects our metastasizing health mania. Anything that might slice a few months or years off one's life is accorded devil status. Potential threats to spiritual or mental well being, meantime, are given wide latitude, and are indeed given a pass.

This represents a change of attitude. At one time, if a person were, say, a cigarette-smoking smut peddler, the smoking was not part of the indictment. Selling women as meat was the issue. These days, a nookie merchant who denounces smoking is accorded high social status. Such was the case the other day when scriptwriter Joe Eszterhas, whose credits include a nookfest entitled Showgirls as well as films rich in violence, had a powerful anti-smoking piece published in the New York Times.

The Times, perhaps not by coincidence, has editorially embraced the anti-smoking crackdown and even reported "overwhelming support" for the ban by city residents, though as the New York Press helpfully points out the polling that supports this unlikely proposition was done by associations with an anti-smoking agenda. In any event, it published Mr. Eszterhas's column in clear support of its campaign.

Mr. Eszterhas is suffering from cancer he believes was brought on by smoking. He calls himself a former "militant smoker," which seems a bit dramatic but that's his line of work. In this same vein, he says smoking "should be as illegal as heroin" and that by having many of his characters smoke cigarettes in movies, "I have been an accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings." He has made a "deal with God" to "try to stop others from committing the same crimes I did."

It seems that to the mind of Mr. Eszterhas, packing a movie with violence and sex is acceptable; what makes it unacceptable is if a gunman is smoking while he blows people to kingdom come. Snuff — Si! Puff — Nyet! While no one knows the mind of God, most indications are that the Divine Attitude is at some variance with that of Mr. Eszterhas, who professes himself to now be a regular churchgoer. In the traditions most popular in America, there are indeed commandments against murder and adultery, and warnings about the act once known as fornication. One looks in vain for "Thou shalt not puff, or dip the snuff."

Mr. Eszterhas is brave to admit that which Hollywood routinely denies: Films can have negative effects. Hollywood credits itself for successfully promoting such virtues as racial tolerance, but denies any role in the coarsening of the American mind, especially regarding violence and sex. These are the same people who charge companies to place products in films, which works on the principle that merely seeing a starlet drink a Budweiser will inspire viewers to buy Bud. These same impressionable minds are apparently not affected by the fact that said starlet is servicing someone between sips, or so goes the Hollywood dogma.

Meanwhile, back in New York, the mayor opines that "you've got to be pretty stupid to smoke" but that "I'm not sure that we should take away your right" — which surely represents a red shirt to freedom-loving New Yorkers. Bloomberg clearly sees himself as the source of freedom and rights. It appears the man shares something in common with Robert Mugabe.

— Dave Shiflett is coauthor of Christianity on Trial.