Last Night Was the Last Night to Smoke in New Orleans

At midnight last night, smokers in bars across New Orleans put out their cigars, cigarettes, and pipes as the city’s late-coming smoking ban flamed into effect. After years of debate, the city known as “The Big Easy” passed legislation making things a little harder on smokers: if they want to light up, it will be outside a bar. (Ordering your beer or alcoholic slushie “to-go” is, thankfully, still kosher.) It’s a sad day for many -- those who feel such a ban is out of place in a city known for its indulgent and permissive atmosphere -- but a boon to others, like musicians or waiters who might resent such a hazy workplace, or non-smokers who had formerly limited their patronage the city’s few voluntarily non-smoking bars.

But for the die-hards -- the nicotine-stained fingertip crowd, the unrepentant pack-a-day-purists --there are still places in the world (even in ban-happy New York) where’s it’s free, legal, and easy to smoke. Did you think airport smoking lounges were a think of the past? Not at Denver International, where the Smokin’ Bear Lodge Lounge welcomes patrons to puff (as long as they reach a $5 tab minimum). In Los Angeles, the Tiki-Ti Cocktail Lounge is a “smoky, crowded” tiki bar that nevertheless is a fun ‘n’ dingy throwback to a pre-ban era (all the staff are family and that skirts the ban, apparently…). New York, surprisingly, offers a bevy of options for the nicotine-inclined: the Biergarten at the Standard Highline is outside, and welcomes smokers, while Circa Tabac is a SOHO smoking bar that escapes the city’s smoking ban by making at least 10% of its income from tobacco. Or, you could go just about anywhere in China, where a state-owned tobacco company and lax regulation of minimal restrictions mean the nation is -- for better or (likely) worse -- your ashtray.  

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