The war on snoring moves to hotels

If you are among the millions of American men who snore, regularly and lustily, you know the drill: The late-night jabs to the ribs. The banishment to a separate sleeping chamber. The morning recriminations.

There are demands that you treat your "condition" with nose strips, mouth guards, throat sprays and those hideous oxygen masks that, as one ad says, make you feel like you're being smothered by an octopus.

Snorers get no sympathy at home. And now, there's a new movement to shame and blame snorers wherever they slumber.

Some Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts in England dispatch "snore monitors" to patrol corridors in the designated quiet zones, Reuters reports. They're deputized to knock on the doors of guests who snore too loudly. How soon before the snoring police debut in America?

We say: Enough.

Memo to Crowne: Save your money. There's already a monitor fully deputized to roust a recalcitrant snorer: The person sleeping next to him. (And yes, even she sometimes snores!)

Even if that monitor is not available, we're not convinced that snoring is a major source of hotel noise pollution.

But we've never actually heard someone snoring in the next room.

Targeting snorers above all other clamor-producers is unfair. Drunken partyers kicking up a ruckus in the next room and disturbing other guests can theoretically pipe down. See, they are awake.

How is it fair to hold a snorer responsible for something he does while asleep? What your soft palate and uvula do while you are not conscious isn't really your fault, is it?

If hotels really want to help, how about passing out earplugs to all guests? Or creating snore-only floors?

Snoring tends to get worse as people get older. Trust us on this one. That's why we like Crowne's other idea: "Snore absorption rooms."

Even superstar Tom Cruise, a reputed snorer, reportedly converted a guest bedroom so he can make all the racket he wants while snoozing.