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Written by Staff
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Saturday, 05 April 2008 06:29
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Step inside Park Lane Tobacconist and you’ll find a haven for cigar smokers,
complete with high-definition televisions and comfortable lounge chairs.
Faint traces of cigar smoke waft in the air while ashtrays dot small wooden
coffee stands, their bowels home to gray ash and extinguished cigars.
It is, for smoking aficionados and members of the store’s cigar club, one of the
few places left for them to smoke indoors.
"People are paying for the privilege of having a place to smoke in comfort, and
they’re doing it in droves," said James Kommer, who owns the Saratoga Springs
business, located on Broadway since last summer.
His store’s popularity highlights the dichotomy between public policy,
increasingly aligned against smokers, and those who continue to blow smoke in
its face.
Several recent examples of the anti-smoking lobby are taking hold locally.
Smoke-free apartments are springing up in Saratoga Springs, Queensbury and
elsewhere.
The Town of Greenfield recently passed a resolution encouraging retailers to
better camouflage their tobacco advertisements, a move some other local
governments are likely to consider in the months ahead.
Anti-tobacco groups are lobbying grocery store chains to remove tobacco from
their shelves, a movement that has already taken hold in central New York.
Public spaces like Derby Park in Hudson Falls and the Great Escape amusement
park in Queensbury now usher smokers into designated areas to keep them
isolated, and area hospitals have instituted campus-wide bans on smoking over
the last two years.
In perhaps the boldest recent move, the state this week budgeted a tax increase
of $1.25 for every pack of cigarettes, bringing the total tax to $2.75 — the
highest in the country and well above the national average of $1.11.
It’s a siege on smoking that appears to be picking up steam — to the cheers of
some and the jeers of others.
