The Denver airport is among the more smoker-friendly airports, historically speaking. It’s not quite as great the one in Salt Lake City, but they at least have a few private establishments where they allow people to smoke in piece. No more, though. They’re down to only one, and the signs are that one will be going away in 2018 as soon as the lease expires in 2018.

I understand that we do not want to go back to the days when smokers were rampant and their smoke was nigh-impossible to escape. But seriously, are we reaching the point where room cannot be made in an airport of however many square feet? That it is just too much of an imposition on non-smokers that smokers have a single place rather than a Jamba Juice?

I really do wonder the extent to which it is no longer the second-hand smoke that is required to bother other people to justify a ban, but the notion of being bothered by people smoking. The rubber will hit the road when it comes to ecigarettes and what kind of restrictions we place on them. I made note of the fact that Starbucks is banning them along with regular cigarettes on their property. Brandon Berg made a good point that this may simply be a measure to avoid having to police whether it’s smoke or vapor coming out of the thing that the guy or girl has between her fingers.

Maybe so. At least, that’ll be the rationale that most people rely on. A part of me wonders the extent to which we have really reached the point where smoking, or vaping, is to be considered such shameful behavior that it is to be pushed out of public view altogether regardless of the harm or lack thereof of people around. Which wouldn’t be a completely bad thing (if the ecigarettes take off, I will try not to use them in Lain’s sight), but overlooks rather obvious problems.

Namely, that smokers are going to smoke somewhere unless you go the route of Hawaii or Albuquerque (even there, I’m told that you should simply ask an employee who smells like cigarette smoke and they’ll tell ya). Preventing them from having a lounge in the Denver airport is going to cause a non-trivial number of them to clutter up the security lines re-entering.