The smoking ban...will we be flogged for defending our rights?

I was drawn to the package -- a royal red box, a knight's helmet atop a coat of arms flanked by two regal lions. Beneath the logo, a banner bore the phrase "In Hoc Signo Vinces."

And inside the palm-sized package were my father's favored smoke, the unfiltered Pall Mall red.

I remember my first lip lock with tobacco. I swiped a pack from the kitchen counter where my dad would drop his wallet, keys and smokes every day. I found a book of matches and snuck into the darkened basement. Crouched beside a dresser where my father's reel-to-reel tape recorder sat, I nervously struck a match, set fire to the pilfered stick and sniffed the smoke, the scent of Pall Mall red inextricably connected to my dad.

I placed the cig to my lips and drew a breath -- first a little, then a lot.

Whereupon I choked and my eyes teared. I tried again, only to gag and spit. Little flecks of tobacco stuck to my lips.

What a tough guy my father must be, I marveled.

I was 11.

A week later, I mustered up the nerve to try again. I studied my father's technique.

This time, I got sick to my stomach.

Curiosity extinguished.

Five years later, my father noticed a few of my buddies carried packs of Marlboro Lights -- a womanly cigarette, in my view. Dad admonished me not to start.

"Way ahead of you, Dad," I replied, recalling the ill-fated basement experiment.

I never joined the legions of smokers, but I empathize. Throughout my childhood, both my parents smoked, as did every aunt and uncle in the family. Second-hand smoke never bothered me. Still doesn't. Today, though, nearly everyone in my family has quit. Dad's been off the cancer sticks for about 20 years now. Mom can't drop the habit, though. When she comes to visit, she sneaks them in the bathroom.

My fascination with smoking ended quickly, but the American fascination has endured for hundreds of years.

"In Hoc Signo Vinces" ... in this sign, you will conquer.

These days, smokers seem to be the conquered.

Two decades after workplaces forced their nicotine-addicted employees outside to smoke their lungs, local governments now are declaring all public places tobacco-free zones.

The put-upon smoker feels like a criminal, a victim of discrimination. Smokers' tempers have flared of late with Orland Park and Tinley Park looking anew at their smoking bans and the effect they may have on local restaurants and pubs.

Look back in history, however, and you'll find these latest bids to stomp out smoking pale in comparison (as pale as an 11-year-old sucking on an unfiltered Pall Mall red). In centuries past, the punishment for fouling the air with your lung-candy was far more severe.

Abigail Cutler, writing in the January/February Atlantic monthly, assembled the following great moments in tobacco prohibition history.

1624: On the logic that tobacco use prompts sneezing, which too closely resembles sexual ecstasy, Pope Urban VIII issues a worldwide smoking ban and threatens excommunication for those who smoke or take snuff in holy places. A century later, snuff-loving Pope Benedict XIII repeals all papal smoking bans.

1633: Sultan Murad IV prohibits smoking in the Ottoman Empire; as many as 18 people a day are executed for breaking the law.

1634: Czar Michael of Russia bans smoking, promising whippings, floggings, a slit nose and a one-way trip to Siberia for even first-time offenders. By 1674, smokers are deemed criminals subject to the death penalty. Two years later, the ban is lifted.

1646: The General Court of Massachusetts Bay prohibits citizens from smoking tobacco except when on a journey and at least five miles away from any town. The next year, the Colony of Connecticut restricts citizens to one smoke a day, "not in company with any other." By the early 1700s, New England is a major consumer and producer of tobacco.

1895: North Dakota bans the sale of cigarettes. Over the next 26 years, 14 other statehouses follow suit. By 1927, all smoke-free legislation -- except that banning the sale of cigarettes to minors -- is repealed.

1942: Adolf Hitler calls tobacco "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor," and directs one of the most aggressive anti-smoking campaigns in history, including heavy taxes and bans on smoking in many public places. Germany's anti-smoking movement loses most of its momentum after the Nuremberg trials, and by the mid-1950s, domestic consumption exceeds prewar levels.

I think banning smoking in bars is a little over the top, though not as severe as flogging or nose-slitting.

The cigarette and the alcoholic drink go hand in hand, so to speak, at the local tavern. Smoke is part of the culture, and you know this if you frequent any watering hole. Full-fledged restaurants, on the other hand, here a case for a ban can and should be made. A smoker ought to be able to exercise enough self-control to abstain for the course of a meal.

Contrary to the invective unleashed by irate smokers these days, the crusade to stop smoking in eateries now sweeping the country doesn't quite match the zeal of the Nazis or, worse yet, the Puritans.

Dennis Robaugh can be reached at drobaugh@dailysouthtown.com.