SMOKING Crafting a domestic policy isn't easy task

A lot of people still smoke, but do they have to do so in your house?
By JURA KONCIUS
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- We used to have a very tolerant policy toward smokers in our house. Even though my husband and I have never smoked, we would not banish guests to the backyard to huddle around a beer bottle full of butts. They were welcome to light up in our living room, where we provided ashtrays. Overnight visitors could have a smoke with their morning coffee without getting a lecture.
But two recent visits by chain-smoking houseguests left us fuming -- and re-evaluating our lenient hospitality. One guest stubbed out more than 100 cigarettes over a weekend visit. Lying in bed, we could smell tobacco circulating through our heating vents. So could our teen-age son, who had heard plenty of anti-smoking lectures in school. The time had come for us to craft a new domestic policy on smoking.
Many parents today grew up in an era when Mom and Dad smoked in the car with the windows closed while kids bounced around without seat belts. Porcelain ashtrays were given as wedding gifts. College yearbooks featured snapshots of undergrads smoking at proms and football games. Seats in airplanes and waiting rooms had built-in ashtrays.
The changes
"When I grew up, my parents had a crystal box of cigarettes on the dining room table and a big ashtray with a teardrop-shaped crystal thing to stub out the butts," says Luc Sante, author of "No Smoking: A Social Retrospective on the Cigarette," a new book packaged in a box shaped like a giant pack of cigarettes. Sante and his wife are reformed smokers who keep an ashtray on their upstate New York porch for the few friends who still smoke.
Millions of Americans quit smoking in the 1980s and '90s after a drumbeat of bad news about smoking-related illnesses and second-hand smoke, plus the advent of smoke-free offices and restaurants. In 1993, Bill and Hillary Clinton banned smoking at the White House.
Despite the negative publicity, 22 percent of Americans over 18 still smoke, according to U.S. government statistics. Some of these people are our friends and relatives. So if you invite them over, should you write "Smokers Not Welcome" on invitations, stitch "No Smoking" needlepoint pillows or equip a guest room with Nicorette gum?
Consideration counts
The best answers for hosts and guests, say social arbiters, are to be considerate of others, and be upfront.
Manners maven Letitia Baldrige says hosts need to be sympathetic to smoking's addictive nature. If you have to ask dinner guests to step outside to smoke, she says it's best not to heap on comments about how much smoking upsets you or makes you sick. "There is no need to make them feel guilty. There are enough things to feel guilty about these days."
She also says overnight guests should be forthright about confessing their love of smoking, and hosts should be honest about their expectations. "Do not invite people to stay overnight without mentioning at the time of the invitation, 'I hope this won't change your plans, but we don't smoke in our house.' "
According to "21st-Century Etiquette," by New York society author Charlotte Ford, the once-rhetorical question "Do you mind if I smoke?" has become "a requirement, not a polite gesture." She writes, "Smokers should be accustomed to having a cigarette only in designated smoking zones so as not to inconvenience others."