Don't smoke, you wretch on the ash-covered road to ruin

According to new stats on smoking, more Minnesota teens have decided they don't want to stand outside when it's 20 below sucking on highly taxed twitch-sticks. Smoking rates are down, and that's good. This figure from the study, however, sounded curious:

"The declines occurred even though the tobacco industry now spends about $228 million a year on marketing in Minnesota, up from about $170 million eight years ago."

Never mind the "even though" -- if marketing was just programming for robots, everybody would have joined the Army and Denny Hecker would be diving in money, Scrooge McDuck style. Here's the real question:

How are they managing to spend a quarter of a billion dollars a year marketing in this state? Billboards have been banned for 10 years. They couldn't put up a billboard if it said "Smoke Spud -- they're chock-full of toasted cadmium, make your DNA unravel, and each one has more tar than MnDOT'S annual road repair budget, but only a small percentage of the opposite sex will be appalled by your aroma!"

Even then the billboard would have a Surgeon General's Warning -- which, at this stage in the game, should just say AS IF YOU DON'T KNOW or perhaps OH, GO COUGH UP A LUNG. YOU HAVE A SPARE. NO, SERIOUSLY: QUIT.

Smoking has been stigmatized to the point where it's an immoral act -- stand in line at the convenience store, and half the people who ask for smokes have the furtive shame of someone asking for a magazine with trussed-up nurses on the cover.

The anti-smoking advocates, however, aren't content with the progress made thus far. Movies, they note, glamorize smokers, and this leads gullible teens down the ash-strewn path to perdition.

It looked very glamorous and moody and grown-up -- but only if you were a hard-bitten shamus whose partner had been gunned down, and now you're standing by some venetian blinds waiting for Ingrid Bergman.

Also, you're wearing a hat. Your smoking hat. We all wanted to be Bogie-style smokers, except for the dying-from-smoking part.

Nowadays? It's become a cheap way of indicating bad character. Devious executives smoke. Cold-hearted Russian assassins smoke. It's a sign of moral failure.

In the Bond novel "Casino Royale," James Bond smoked four packs of unfiltered cigarettes in one gambling marathon, which meant he couldn't even say "007" without pausing to catch his breath after the second 0. Now Bond doesn't smoke anymore. Iron Man doesn't smoke. Batman doesn't smoke. Darth Vader sounds like he used to, but quit. The only brand-name movie character you can imagine smoking is Jaws.

The various bans have reduced smoking, and that's good -- sort of. The question is how far you take the idea.

If adults can't get together in a public establishment and be sociable in a cigar-friendly arena, then shut down every book club in town that uncorks a bottle of white wine to facilitate the chat. I'm more worried about someone who had a Chablis and drove than someone who spent three hours burning a stogie the size of a piano leg.

Here's another survey tidbit:

"Nearly 90 percent (of middle schoolers) said they believe that smoking should never be allowed inside their homes, in their cars or at work."

I'm torn. On one hand, "their" becomes "your" eventually. On the other hand, I don't know why anyone would want to smoke around their kids and infuse their hair with that Winston perfume.

Then again, I enjoy a cigar. But inside the home? In my car? At work? Never. When it comes to cigars, I do it outside. One more thing men have in common with dogs.