WEST PARK MALL TO BAN SMOKING

It is getting harder and harder to find a place to light up.

West Park Mall will ban smoking in its public areas as of Feb. 1, joining a growing number of malls nationwide that have declared themselves smoke free.

Such bans don't sit well with smokers like Ralph Sharp, who feels discriminated against and ostracized by society.

"We definitely feel put upon," he said as he puffed away on his pipe.

Sharp's Tobacco Lane store at the Cape Girardeau mall stands out as a smoker's oasis in an age of intolerance to the vice. The smell of pipe tobacco permeates the place.

Here, it is not only permissible to light up, it is encouraged.

The bearded and mustached Sharp smokes cigarettes, cigars and pipes with equal passion.

"Due to the nature of my shop, I have to be able to sample everything, so I smoke everything," he said.

Sharp said smokers in the '90s are gaining an understanding of what blacks went through in the early 1960s.

"It is still just as legal to smoke as it was to be black, but we are also picked upon, discriminated against as much as blacks were in the '60s," he said, adding that smokers soon won't even get to sit in the back of the bus.

"At this rate, they are going to set us on top of the bus," he said.

Tobacco Lane employee and smoker Jeff Whitesides said, "It is total discrimination. I am sick of people complaining about it."

West Park Mall is managed by Westfield Corp. of Los Angeles. The company operates 25 major shopping centers nationwide. All of them are slated to be smoke free by the end of the year.

Many of its malls already have banned smoking in the commons areas, including several in St. Louis.

Randy Smith, Westfield's executive vice president of marketing, said such bans have become standard.

"Most of the offices and public places in America are going smoke free," he said. "We feel with the concerns of second-hand smoke that it is best for our shoppers in the long run."

West Park Mall Manager Karen Beckman said, "I don't think that our shoppers come to West Park Mall for the specific purpose to smoke."

She said, "We are not creating a good guy-bad guy scenario here."

But Sharp and other smokers disagree.

Sharp said customers already can't smoke in most mall stores, including Venture, Famous Barr and J.C. Penney.

Smokers have been able to light up in the courts in front of the three anchor stores. But with the public areas becoming smoke free Feb. 1, smoking will be confined to the mall's restaurants and Tobacco Lane, Sharp said.

Shoppers and mall workers will end up congregating outside mall doors to light up.

"Unfortunately, they will be forced to expose themselves to inclement weather and possible health hazards in order to engage in what is still a legal pasttime," Sharp said.

The Penney store used to have a separate lunchroom for its employees who smoked. But that was eliminated Nov. 1.

"Our entire company is smoke free," local store manager Harry Rediger said.

The store's employees have been able to smoke in the mall's courts. But the mall ban likely will force them to stand outside to smoke, Rediger said.

Venture had allowed smoking in its restaurant before banning the activity entirely last July. The ban applies both to customers and employees.

Famous, however, has a smoking area for its employees.

Sharp doesn't understand why the mall wants to be more restrictive than Missouri law, which allows indoor public places to set aside as much as 30 percent of their areas for smoking.

He predicted the ban will cause some smokers to go elsewhere to shop. Smoking is allowed in the public areas of malls in Kentucky, he said.