SMOKER VS. NON-SMOKER; SOME NON-SMOKERS ARE CALLING FOR GRADUAL BAN ON CIGARETTES; SMOKERS CALL THE IDEA UN-AMERICAN

~Correction: Robert Bilbrey puffed on a hand-rolled cigarette at the bar in Jeremiah's in downtown Cape Girardeau. (PHOTO BY LOU PEUKERT) (COLOR)

The battle lines are drawn -- smoker against non-smoker.

It's noticeable in restaurants, where the two groups are separated by partitions. It's in the office, where non-smokers work in air-conditioned comfort while smokers snatch a few puffs in 90-degree heat outside.

Now, with the president talking about even stricter regulations, smokers say enough is enough.

But they say it quietly. Even many who feel strongly about the subject don't want to be photographed smoking or give a quote for the newspaper.

"They feel ashamed they smoke because vocal zealots have worked to make them feel ashamed of a perfectly legal pastime," smoker Ralph Sharp said.

Sharp manages Tobacco Lane, the only store in West Park Mall that allows smoking. He said he isn't only concerned about smoking legislation because tobacco is his livelihood. Sharp fears once smoking is taken away, other unhealthy privileges, including eating fatty foods or drinking coffee, might disappear, too.

He favors accommodating people on both sides, showing concern for people with smoke allergies and for people who enjoy cigarettes, cigars and pipes.

However, now that many buildings have banned smoking, some smokers don't feel they're being accommodated.

Three-pack-a-day smoker Roger Graham was in front of St. Francis Medical Center this week, taking a break from visiting a relative. Although St. Francis provides smoking shelters around the hospital, visitors seem to gravitate toward the front entrance, and Graham had plenty of company.

Smoking at work isn't a problem for Graham -- he's employed on a riverboat and can smoke anywhere he wants. Visiting the hospital was a different story.

"I feel you should have rights," Graham said. "This place should have designated areas inside the hospital. It's my choice to smoke, and it's a lot cooler in there than it is out here right now."

Graham's companions echoed his remarks, but some non-smokers would pale at the thought of cigarettes inside Cape Girardeau's two hospitals.

Nurse Nancy Mattingly is a cancer program coordinator for Southeast Missouri Hospital and also works with the American Stop Smoking Intervention Study, or ASSIST. The group runs radio ads encouraging non-smokers to stand up for their rights and asks smokers to abstain while in their company.

Mattingly, who quit smoking 10 years ago, said information about secondhand smoke really hits home in her job, working with lung-cancer patients.

She remembered a chemotherapy patient diagnosed with squamous-cell cancer of the lung, a type of cancer only smokers can get. The infected woman swore she never smoked in her life, but doctors didn't believe her until they discovered she was born into a home with two smoking parents.

In addition, the woman's brother smoked, and she was married at a young age to a man who smoked.

"You have to segregate smokers from non-smokers," Mattingly said. "Here at the hospital, we tried having a smoking area in the dining room sectioned off with glass, but the smokers couldn't even stand it in there."

Mattingly feels so strongly about the issue, she asks her mother and sister to step outside her house when they have to smoke. In the winter, the two are allowed to use the garage.

Another ASSIST volunteer, psychologist Jerrell Driver, is convinced legislation is the only key to stopping smoking in this country.

Driver said Congress could pick a generation to quit smoking. For example, lawmakers could decide that anyone younger than 12 on Jan. 1, 2001, couldn't buy cigarettes for his entire life.

Under such a plan, older people already addicted could continue smoking, and the tobacco industry would be phased out slowly instead of collapsing.

Some sort of mark on one's driver's license -- Driver suggested, tongue-in-cheek, a skull and cross bones -- could indicate whether a person was able to purchase tobacco products.

Isn't that a little harsh?

"There's a precedent," Driver said. "Laudanum and other opium-based, over-the-counter drugs were common once, and they were banned."

Even without the ban, Missouri Department of Health statistics show the number of smokers in Cape Girardeau County drops by a couple hundred a year.

But Sharp, Tobacco Lane's manager, says sales of some products increase by 50 percent each year.

So the battle continues.