The process of elimination

The owner of a paint store telephoned the other day to complain about a smoker whose habit was causing him distress. The smoke, he said, was drifting out of the woman’s apartment and wafting down the street into his store.

His complaint caught me off-guard for a moment until I realized he was talking about an occupant of a small apartment building we bought years ago as an investment for our old age, which may be just around the corner, depending on how one looks at it.

I said, “Is this Leo?” He acknowledged that it was. “Your store is three doors away! The smoke would dissipate by the time it got there.”

“I don’t know what she’s smoking,” he said, “but it’s annoying my customers.”

I couldn’t imagine the smell of cigarette smoke annoying anyone who walked into Leo’s paint store. He also restores furniture in a back room, where he often spray paints what he repairs. The fumes seep into the front of the store, where both he and his customers do business in clouds of lacquer.

“You should ban smoking in your building,” he said.

“I’ll consider it if you ban painting in your paint store.” He hung up.

The apartment occupant Leo was complaining about is a tattoo artist whom I will call Bella. That isn’t her real name and I hope she doesn’t associate this column with her, because Bella is very large and can be mean and is not likely to take kindly to the suggestion that she stop smoking.

The people who use her services aren’t the kind who are bothered by cigarette smoke. They are not Hollywood chicks with butterflies etched on their backsides but biker types who want “Born to Kill” inked across their hairy chests over the image of a snake devouring a pig.

I don’t smoke and don’t particularly like the idea of living in smoke, as they do in many parts of Europe. Parisians, particularly, not only bring their dogs to restaurants but also smoke like crazy before, during and after their meals. Your lungs are filled with smoke and your foie de veau with dog hair.

While a smoking ban, and possibly a doggie ban, in restaurants may be a good idea, I’m not about to campaign for a ban in anyone’s living quarters, which is where Bella does her tattooing. The whole banning business is going too far as it is, especially when it is applied to places like L.A.’s public beaches, whose waters are polluted by chemicals and commercial products that are not banned.

According to an article in U.S. News & World Report that I read some years ago, a county in Maryland proposed an ordinance that would have banned smoking in one’s own home if neighbors (like Leo, I would guess) were offended. It was laughed out of existence. Alameda County, the article also noted, bans smoking within 15 feet of any window or doorway of any building, which, I’m sure, is taken about as seriously as banning kissing in cars.

There is little question that smoking is bad for your health, and secondhand smoke isn’t likely to prolong anyone’s life either. But perhaps we ought to be expending at least an equal amount of energy on, say, preventing wars, which are similarly bad for one’s health.

I was surprised to discover how many states, counties and cities have leaped upon the ban wagon (that’s not a typo, just a very bad pun). Among them are places like Fargo, N.D., and Lawrence, Kan., where there is very little else to do but smoke, drink and procreate.

Even people in Tasmania, an island state of Australia, are pushing for the elimination of smoking in public places. This interested me because when I misbehaved as a kid, my mother threatened me by saying she would send me to Tasmania to be eaten by cannibals if I didn’t straighten out.

I’m not sure that there ever were cannibals in Tasmania, but if there were, the practice of eating human beings is probably now banned by government decree and enforced by radical vegetarians. It isn’t the killing of other humans that the world dislikes, it’s the eating of them that seems so, well, unsophisticated. If they won’t do it in Beverly Hills, don’t do it in Tasmania.

Were I to propose any ban at all, which I’m not likely to, I’d ban lying in any governmental building in the United States. A total ban on all politicians is also a possibility, but I think the lying ban would pretty much take care of that. I would also ban greed, the public exposure of female navels and excessive use of the word “cool.”

But there are too many bans already, so just try being yourself. And don’t do anything Bella wouldn’t do, which probably gives you a lot more freedom than you’ll ever need.

Al’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.