It appears that the smoking ban is on its way to the nation’s capital.

Let’s cut through the bull, okay? This isn’t a civil rights issue. I don’t have a Constitutional right to light up over a bacon cheeseburger. On the side of the smokers, this is about convenience, and a preference to not go stand outside in the snow for our regular fix. If you think that I don’t think about that when I’m deciding where to go pay $10 for that burger, you are seriously in denial.

It’s the side of the nonsmokers that bothers me, though. They want to tell you what they stand for in this debate, but that’s the real bull that has to be cut through.

First, enough with the crocodile tears about the health of those poor waitresses who have to work in smoky environments. If you really cared about their well-being, then where the hell were you when we were talking about national health care? Oh, I see, doctors aren’t important to your theory.

And let’s set aside your concerns about clean air. I’m having a smoke right now at my local Starbucks on the outside patio, and your cars are passing me at about a rate of 200 a minute. You, the majority voter, have kept your mouths shut 95% of the time when legislation came up to make cars less polluting, or to restrict driver’s rights to make the air healthier for all of us.

I once resolved to actually measure the pollution impact of a single smoker, pumping out toxins with his tar-encrusted, weakened lungs, versus the impact of a single driver, pumping out toxins with his Detroit engine. But then I realized I didn’t have to. As I said to a friend of mine once, “If I spend all night smoking in your garage, the only health impact is that tomorrow your wife will kill me. But if you leave your car idling overnight, everyone in the house will die.”

So, please, you nonsmokers, stop pretending this is about your health. You drive your cars, sometimes at 90 miles per hour, sometimes after just one beer. You have Big Macs and fudge ripple ice cream. You skydive and rollerblade and climb mountains. In other words, you risk your health ten times a day—and if you don’t, you’re hopelessly neurotic and you’re not in the majority.

So what, then, is this about? And to me, it’s pretty damn clear that it comes down to your convenience. You don’t want to sit in stinky air. Fair enough. So where are the laws mandating that everyone must shower daily, or the civil legislation requiring people who fart in elevators to carry around an anal cork?

Silly, huh? But why are these laws silly? Because we haven’t yet attached those concepts to public morality, at which time we are then allowed to get away with believing anything.

And that’s where we’re going here. Once the morals of the American public are on the legislative agenda, then we get into all sorts of silliness. Explain to me with a straight face, if you can, why it’s legal for an eighteen-year-old to vote, die for his country, or smoke, but not yet responsible enough to drink, gamble, or buy a Playboy.

I’ll tell you why. It’s because a loud minority percentage of this country still goes around asking itself on a daily basis, “What would Cotton Mather do?” And if you haven’t noticed, old CM wasn’t too thrilled about a number of other activities that most Americans take for granted and even engage in from time to time.

And that’s the crux of it. Americans have a history of going through useless spasms where we try to legislate morality. We tried Prohibition. We tried outlawing premarital and all forms of non-missionary man-and-woman sexual activity. These things didn’t take, at least in part because the enforcement of these laws always managed to look the other way when the people involved were members of a privileged class.

Heck, take gambling. For a century, it was buried under thousands of federal, state, and local laws. Now some form of gambling is legal everywhere but Utah—which, in proof that Moroni has a sense of humor, is right next door to Nevada. But even Utahans can get together a poker minyon these days if they have an Internet connection.

Now, I’m sure that the latter-day Matherites will move on to gambling as soon as they can. They run into a bit of a hurdle there because of the sweet, sweet revenue stream that most governments enjoy by running lotteries that return fifty cents on the dollar. But thanks to the dangers of second-hand smoke, the redball target is my cancer stick.

I’m not saying that second-hand smoke isn’t dangerous (although some people do). I’m saying that if danger is your real concern, you’re mathematically illiterate. And for most of you, stinky is your real concern.

But there’s one thing you’re missing in all this. See, you might not have heard, but there’s a substance called “nicotine” in cigarettes, and it’s addictive. Therefore, most people who smoke are addicts. If you want to know the feeling of being addicted, abstain from food for a few days. It’s like that.

Actually, if you want to know the feeling of being addicted, get a close personal friend whom you don’t want to talk to, ever again, and have him hide your car keys for a week. Because what you’ve got there is a social addiction. I can tell that every time I see the look on the face of someone who hears me say, “I’ve never gotten a driver’s license.” Remember your car? That machine that pumps out carbon monoxide into the ambient air of everyone but you? I thought you did.

Addicts are unlikely to give up their addictions easily. When my mother was dying, which as you might expect was a stressful time, I took frequent breaks 30 feet from the hospital’s front door to get away for a few minutes. I shared that space, in that December winter, with smoking patients. Some of them in hospital gowns and no coats. Some of them wheeling along their IVs. One of them who memorably threw up in the snow every time she took a puff. But she always took another.

If you truly cared about the health of these people, you’d do the sensible thing and stick a smoking area in a hospital.

Or airports, for that matter. When I’m about to get on a transpacific non-smoking flight, what am I going to do? You guessed it, I’m going to go through security three times during my layover. If you want to speed up airport security and prevent them from eyeballing the smokers repeatedly, stick a smoking area there as well. Give us the old, ratty furniture—we won’t care.

So pass your laws in DC and elsewhere. You’ll drive the smokers out on the street, where the second-hand smoke will be blown at anyone who is passing by. On a busy night, prepare to walk in traffic when the sidewalks are too crowded. Let the smokers, about whose welfare you are so concerned, continue to go out in inclement weather. You know we will.

And then when Cotton Mather comes for your favorite vices, as you know they will after they’re emboldened by a victory, then let’s see how much sympathy you enjoy from the majority of right-thinking Americans around you.