Smokers lose even more places to light up. (flickr, needoptic)

Poor smokers! Forced to shiver outside with chilly, chapped fingers all winter long, and then when the weather finally improves, New York announces that it will be expanding its state park smoking ban.

The ban on smoking in some areas of state parks had a rocky start (the state suspended it temporarily after smokers' rights groups threatened to sue) and the legal challenge is, in fact, ongoing, But apparently, New York State is feeling very cocky, not only moving forward with the ban, but extending it to even more parks. Now smokers will only be able to suck fresh air into their damaged lungs when they visit one of the city's parks. Or, the skin particle-laden air that passes for fresh in New York City.

"Our state parks embody the rich, natural beauty that New York has to offer, and our residents should be able to enjoy them free of pollution or second hand smoke," Governor Cuomo stated in a release, calling the expanded ban "an important step forward in ensuring New York's families can enjoy great outdoors smoke-free, in a healthy environment."

Smoking is already banned in all New York City parks, public plazas and boardwalks—in addition, of course, to all office buildings, restaurants, and increasingly, apartments. Smokers are increasingly being forced to huddle unhappily on the city's already packed sidewalks. State parks were some of the few outdoor spaces where smokers could still light up.

Now smoking will now be almost totally banned at Bayswater State Park, Clay Pit Ponds Reserve, East River State Park, Gantry Plaza State Park, Riverbank State Park and Roberto Clemente State Park. Smokers will be restricted to the sidewalks abutting exterior roads and the parking lots. Increasingly, the only oasis available to smokers is the back patio of a bar.

The ban will likely be unwelcome news for the city's smokers, who have had to contend with two new Bloombergian assaults recently: attempts to raise the smoking age to 21 and to hide all cigarettes behind curtains to dissuade impressionable young smokers from seeing (and therefore wanting?) them.

Moreover, the ban comes at a particularly bad time for smokers, who will not be able to light up at anything goes, topless, lifeguard-less Fort Tilden this year. The National Park will remain closed for the summer season because of Sandy damage, forcing sunbathers and swimmers into the city-controlled no-smoking Rockaways beaches.

Smoking rights advocates have vowed to continue their battle: "The obstinate posture by NYS Parks Commissioner Rose Harvey and her staff  in the celebratory announcement about this ban as if nothing is amiss is abhorrent," wrote Audrey Silk in a press release. "The crusade against smokers to date has so emboldened government  that there's no second thought to whether or not they're acting above the law by imposing law on citizens who choose to smoke and then fully expecting them to respect it."

Still, it's almost enough to extinguish a smoker's hope.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the legal challenge had been squashed. Despite the state's decision to expand the ban, it is, in fact, ongoing. The Observer regrets the error.

Those were the days: Pianist Willie “the Lion” Smith smoking in his NYC apartment in 1947. (NPR)

It's been a few months since we've heard anything about Mayor Bloomberg's war on smoking, so we should have known that something was brewing. Especially since our health czar had uncharacteristically long spell of down time—the soda ban passed in September—in his crusade to force New Yorkers to lead healthier lives.

Well, The New York Post reports that Mr. Bloomberg has been planning a secret assault on smoking this whole time. Well, sort of. He's offering community groups who convince buildings to go smoke-free a $10,000 thank-you, to be paid out by a Centers for Disease Control grant.

Community groups will have to work pretty hard for the money: to collect the windfall, they'll need to convince at least two multi-unit buildings with a minimum of 30 units each to adopt smoke-free policies.

The plan comes on the heels of Bloomberg's push this spring to force residential buildings to disclose their smoking policies and procedures to potential buyers and renters. At the time, Bloomberg insisted that he had no intention to institute an outright ban.

“Smoking kills and people have the right to know if they are going to be exposed to secondhand smoke,” the Mayor said in a statement at the time, telling worried smokers that the legislation would just allow people to know if they were being exposed to the deadly fumes from neighboring apartments, balconies, rooftops, courtyards or within 15 feet of the building's entrance.

Of course, this new initiative wouldn't be the Bloomberg administration enforcing an all-out ban, it's just the Bloomberg administration encouraging buildings to ban smoking. Via cash incentives.

Naturally, news of the administration's stealthy push has angered smokers, who rightly ask where, if not in their homes, will they be able to smoke? Certainly not in parks, restaurants, bars, movie theaters, office buildings or within 15 feet of many/most building entrances. Will they be reduced to smoking in the middle of the sidewalk? Will they need to buy cars to use as smoking pods? Secret smoking clubs? The desolate warehouse filled streets of Bushwick?

“They are liars!" Audrey Silk, smoking advocate and founder of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment told the Post. “They acclimate the public to a ban, and then they go after the final frontier of our freedom—our homes!”

The Bloomberg administration insists that it's just funding education programs. With specific quotas. And cash rewards.

kvelsey@observer.com

Take up the torch! (Dale M. Moore, flickr)

It may be a small victory in a losing war, but at least José Arozamena can come home tonight, light up a cigarette and take a long, celebratory draw.

A judge has ruled that Mr. Arozamena, who lives at 260 Park Avenue South, can continue to light up in his apartment, the Post reports.

The condo board may have been emboldened by Mayor Bloomberg's most recent move to kick smoking in the butt, but they were a little overzealous. After all, the mayor's proposed legislation would only have required formal smoking policies and disclosures, not full-out bans.

Moreover, smoking wasn't forbidden by the condo, even if the board did try to argue that the smell of smoke violated house rules.

The judge found scant proof that Mr. Arozamena was the source of the stench, if there was a stench, or that his love of lighting up was unreasonable conduct. It all made Mr. Arozamena as hard to kick as a two-pack-a-day habit.

And while smokers can draw a long, ragged sigh of relief at this news, it's likely to be short-lived, with 59 percent of New Yorkers preferring smoke-free apartment buildings.

But really, as irksome as the occasional whiff of cigarettes can be, anti-smoking crusaders should put things in perspective. At least they don't live next to a fish farming enthusiast.

kvelsey@observer.com

The neighbors are not fans (AMagill, flickr)

The majority of New Yorkers would actually like to live in smoke-free buildings, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll, they just don't like Mayor Bloomberg telling them what to do.

Although 59 percent of New Yorkers told pollsters that they wanted to live in a building where no one was allowed to smoke, another 53 percent thought that city hall shouldn't pressure co-ops, condos or apartment buildings to ban smoking.

Basically, no one likes a nanny state, even when they like everything the nanny does.

Of course, Mayor Bloomberg has insisted that the new law he's been pushing wouldn't force buildings to ban smoking, it would just require them to disclose their smoking policies and procedures to potential tenants and renters.

“We protect people from hurting themselves if they’re trying to jump off a bridge, we restrain them,” Mr. Bloomberg told The New York Times when he announced his policy proposal last month. “Should you really do it with smoking? We’re not going to do it with smoking, but we—this is purely an informational thing.”

Women are bigger fans than men of smoke free buildings, (63 percent to 55 percent), although not by much, according to the poll, and even though people don't really like the idea of the Bloomberg administration nosing into their apartment buildings, 45 percent said that the mayor's steps to improve the health habits of city residents were "about right." Still, 33 percent felt that the administration had gone too far butting into people's lives.

No matter what happens with Mayor Bloomberg's law, it's likely that apartment smoking bans will become more popular, further igniting the anger of the city's nicotine-addicts.

kvelsey@observer.com

Extinguished forever? (Ferran, flickr)

So much for a man's home being his castle and all that. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is now going after the last refuge of the city's beleaguered smokers—their apartments.

Mayor Bloomberg is strongly advocating for a new law that would require buildings to disclose smoking policies and procedures to potential tenants and renters. The Wall Street Journal was the first to break the bad news.

“Smoking kills and people have the right to know if they are going to be exposed to secondhand smoke,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement. “We pursued this proposal in response to complaints from New Yorkers. It won’t ban smoking in residential buildings, only ensure that New Yorkers can choose a smoke-free place to live."

Of course, the Mayor would never dream of instituting a smoking ban, he assured the city's nicotine-addicted residents. It's just that people should be able to make an informed decision about whether they wanted to live in the kind of death trap that allows smoking in  apartments, on balconies or rooftops, in courtyards or within 15 feet of the building's entrances. That's all.

“We protect people from hurting themselves if they’re trying to jump off a bridge, we restrain them,” Mr. Bloomberg told the New York Times. “Should you really do it with smoking? We’re not going to do it with smoking, but we—this is purely an informational thing.”

Even before the announcement, REBNY's Residential Management Council released a guide of best practices for managing agents whose buildings are considering implementing no-smoking policies. It wasn't advocating for or against, REBNY explained, just anticipating that "the limitation or banning of smoking within residential units may be more prevalent in the residential market in the future."

Some buildings, like the Ariel West tower in Queens, already ban smoking.

Naturally, the proposal has ignited outrage in the smoking community, which is hard-pressed to find a place to light up the cigarettes they can barely afford anyway. In the last decade, they've been banned from bars and restaurants, parks, beaches and public plazas.

Adding insult to injury, the city is also cracking down on smoking scofflaws in parks, and has issued 108 tickets for violations so far this year, more than in all of 2011.

“This is their blueprint,” Audrey Silk, a smoker and founder of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, told Crain's. “Acclimate the public to an idea so when they do come through with the force of law, the backlash is muted."

The Bloomberg administration helpfully points out that this new law is similar to disclosure policies that already exist about lead paint or bedbugs.

Ouch!

kvelsey@observer.com

No smokes for you!

Well, we knew this was coming. Back in November, the city of New York filed a lawsuit against Island Smokes for avoiding the state's high cigarette tax by allowing customers to roll their own tobacco in-store.

While selling loose tobacco and not paying the cigarette tax isn't illegal, the lawyer for the city's corporation council affirmative litigation division, Eric Proshansky, declared that by helping patrons make their own cigs in the establishments, the stores were allowing people to leave with a finished product and thus circumventing the tax. So the question was:  is a cigarette indeed more than the sum of its part?

Apparently so, since the city has decided to go after two more shops. Today the New York City Corporation Counsel and Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman  launched a joint filing against tobacco stores BB’s Corner n Brooklyn and Nitecap Entertainment on Staten Island, for violating "the Federal Contraband Cigarette Trafficking Act, the New York State Cigarette Marketing Standards Act, and New York State tax law."

According to a memo released by NYC Law Department today, the stores are both guilty of lying about their product:

Despite claiming not to sell cigarettes, BB’s Corner and Nitecap advertised “200 count cartons” of “smokes” for “$29.95 per carton” – less than half of the amount of the taxes alone on a carton of cigarettes.

Since November, six stores have been shut down for allowing customers to roll their own cigs. "When one business doesn’t play by the rules it hurts not only the taxpayers, who rely on tax revenue to pay for vital services, but all of the small businesses who do the right thing," said  said Finance Commissioner Frankel in the memo. "It is our job to help level the playing field for businesses and ensure all tax revenue due to the City is collected."

Currently New York City has one of the highest cigarette tax in the nation, with an extra $5.85 tacked on to every pack bought in the city. So a pack of cigarettes in the city cost more than a nickel bag of marijuana...and is as practically illegal to smoke in public.

Vile habit, that.

New York is pretty much a no-smoking zone right now, one in which all of us puffers are living in our own private Joseph Heller -- a world where it's legal to buy cigarettes and sometimes even smoke them, but where one finds themselves increasingly admonished and ostracized for doing so. Katie Couric, for instance, will tell you that you're not attractive if you stink of tobacco. Our dream woman, gone forever because we can't kick our nicotine fix.

And yes, we understand that it's a nasty, smelly habit. But you know what else is? Taking it upon yourself to be the self-righteous Thought Police for the "Smell Flowers Not Smoke" campaign, as UES blogger Reggie Darling has done.

At first, we were pretty sure that Reggie Darling's entire persona was a joke. There's his profile (on Blogspot!) that reads like an Awl satire:  "Saint Grottlesex/Ivy League somewhat-observant Episcopalian WASP living on Manhattan's UES during the week with a career in finance," before going on to talk about the Federal house he's restoring up the Hudson River Valley with his pug Pompey and spouse Boy Fenwick. (Or do we have that backwards?)

But the sometimes-New York Social Diary writer was not joking around with his 1,262-word Miss Manners missive on where it is and isn't appropriate to smoke in NYC. If you don't have a spare hour to be lectured, we've broken Reggie's Rules down into some basic points:

1.) Don't smoke indoors (even in your own home).

2.) Don't smoke in your own car.

3.) Don't smoke while walking outdoors.

4.) Don't smoke outdoors while standing near a building.

5.) "Confine your smoking only to areas and places where it is explicitly allowed," which limits you to outer space or New Jersey, since indoor and outdoor smoking is both  illegal and déclassé.

6.) Before lighting up, ask everyone in your immediate vicinity if this is okay with them.

a) If they say no, don't get "shirty" about it. Instead, grovel for their forgiveness, as  "their rights trump yours."

And most of all, remember: All animals are equal, but some animals that don't  smoke are more equal than others.

Back in February, it looked like smoking in your apartment might become harder, too. And now it has spread to the closest thing New Yorkers come to a white-picket home, the condominium. According to The Times, the Ariel West tower, which opened a few years ago, overwhelmingly voted to ban butts in its units.

"Even though people bought into this building thinking they could smoke," said Gideon Stein, the president of the condo board at Ariel West, "people do not have a constitutional right to smoke."

That said, the three-year-old building is not about to become a police state. Enforcement will be complaint-driven, and no one will be knocking on doors or sniffing out smokers. Smoking could, however, quickly become an extremely expensive habit, since the first complaint will draw a $150 fine, and the fine for each succeeding complaint will increase by $150.

And you thought the cigarette taxes were harsh.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

"The statistics don't lie--second hand smoke kills. With this bill, all New Yorkers can now breathe easier and breathe cleaner air," Council Speaker Christine Quinn said in a statement. "No one should have to inhale deadly cigarette smoke when they go to a park or beach." Mayor Bloomberg underscored the public-health benefits of such a program: "Our efforts over the last 9 years have resulted in more than 350,000 fewer smokers, and contributed to New Yorkers living 19 months longer than they did in 2002."

The council vote was 36-12. Some no votes were cast on libertarian grounds, others on the basis that this could serve as a means for racial profiling.

Pedestrians will still be allowed to smoke on the sidewalk and in parking lots, though a lot of good that does while enjoying a picnic or watching the philharmonic in the park. And Gothamist points out that even those areas will be prohibited soon, as smokers are relegated to Cemusa-designed "designated shame shelters."

The ban also applies to all those new public plazas like at Times Square and the one proposed for Astor Place. Maybe this is a stealth effort to drive away all the European tourists and college students, then.

mchaban@observer.com