Things are looking grim indeed for those New Yorkers who want to be able to sit down to a meal or a drink and enjoy a cigarette at the same time. A small pleasure it may sound, and unappealing to some, but soon it may be a thing of the past in the Empire State. A bill is set to be introduced in the State Assembly, with State Senate sponsorship lined up, which would basically extend New York City’s impending ban on smoking in bars and restaurants to the entire state. While one might not expect a Republican governor and a Republican Senate to go along with such a thing, Mr. Pataki has indicated support for banning smoking in public places and the workplace and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno may come on board as well.

What has brought the anti-smoking zealots to where they are? Years of litigation against tobacco companies, demonization of cigarettes, and lobbying for incremental regulation of smoking have worked as planned and all but criminalized cigarette smoking outside one’s own home. In their most recent masterstroke, here in New York State, the anti-smokers managed to turn restaurant and bar owners against each other and against one and other by securing local smoking bans. The bans in New York City and Nassau County, covering many of the New York State Restaurant Association’s members, have persuaded the organization to change course and support a statewide smoking ban. An organiza tion that used to fight for the right of restaurants to serve consumers as they choose now frets about customers fleeing to the state’s less-restrictive burghs and extols the virtues of a level playing field. The tavern owners, who believe that their livelihood is more closely tied to smoking than that of restaurateurs, remain opposed.

Yet even the logic of the restaurant association is quite telling. The owners, even in supporting a statewide ban, see the local bans as a hindrance to their businesses. They assume that consumers will seek out restaurants that give them the choice to light up — The New York Sun has even chronicled a steakhouse in Trenton to which New Yorkers trek to puff in peace. This, in itself, is an argument against all of the bans that have been passed here in New York and elsewhere.

More important, perhaps, is an argument from fiscal self-interest. Both Mr. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg have leaned heavily on tobacco money to patch together their respective budgets. Mr. Pataki raised the state’s cigarette tax to $1.50 a pack, counting on pulling in $250 million a year, to finance the state’s Health Care Reform Act — basically a huge payoff to the health care workers union. Mr. Bloomberg figured he would raise a similar sum with his $1.42 increase in the city cigarette tax. Mr. Pataki is also counting on tobacco money this budget cycle in the form of bonds he hopes to issue against the state’s share of the national tobacco settlement. Taken in tandem with the state pension fund’s holdings (reported in the fund’s 2002 annual report) in Philip Morris Companies ($324,277,761), RJ Reynolds Tobacco Hldg. ($43,598,312), British American Tobacco ($11,888,123), Imperial Tobacco Grp. Plc. ($9,754,118), and Japan Tobacco Inc. ($1,543,320), one has to wonder why the state is so anxious to cut its nose to spite its face. It would seem the last thing the state would want to do right now is make it less convenient for New Yorkers to smoke.