People should be allowed to smoke anywhere not a publicly-owned closed space, at the discretion of the landlord.

Public parks should post smoking regulations to protect open areas prone to fire, but people should be allowed to smoke in open areas otherwise. Large outdoor public performance sites should have a section or area specified for smokers.

Smoking in a place not specified by the landlord as OK should be classified as a misdemeanor, with fines or community service for the first offence and weekend jail time or house arrest with the ankle bracelet for subsequent offences.

Non-smokers can then choose where to spend their money, and where to seek employment. On the latter point, my guess is that employers will get tired of all the absenteeism from lung ailments and heart attacks if they decide to make their companies Smokers' Liberation outposts.

Smokers should have their own health insurance, with appropriate premiums to cover their voluntarily contracted illnesses, and leave the rest of us out of it. Smokers go to the bottom of the heart transplant list unless they quit.

Last week, my daughter went with other members of her civics class to Philadelphia for a state-wide competition. They stayed overnight in a hotel, and specified non-smoking rooms. When she came home, she left all her clothes in the garage rather than putting them in her hamper. When I asked her why, she said that whoever had occupied the non-smoking room she and her two roommates were in had smoked anyway, and that all her clothes stank. The other two girls smelled it as well. None of them had any reason to believe ahead of time that the room had been used that way. It may be in some people's heads, but more often, it's in their noses.

She hates smoking because of the smell, but mostly because she remembers visiting her chainsmoking grandmother in a little apartment while she coughed and her eyes streamed. She also remembers watching her grandmother, dying of emphysema, turn off the oxygen so she could light up.

OK, so it was 20 cents.