I cringe every time I open the paper to find another city banning smokers from public sight and smell -- and that's just about every day now. We, the puffing public, must now jump through increasingly strange and complex hoops in order to indulge our passion. To smoke, we must stand here, but not there. Sit at the bar, but not at the table next to it, and only after 11 p.m. Shiver outside the lobby of the office building, but not on the public sidewalk next to the bus belching diesel smoke. Light up in the heavily ventilated smoker's lounge, but only if we stand on our head while doing so. The degree of compassionate cruelty inflicted upon us varies from city to city.

Take Minneapolis, where I had the displeasure of a stopover on a trip out west last summer. There, I was forced to completely leave the mammoth airport building in order to get a nicotine fix after spending hours crammed in a center seat on the flight from New York. Repeated delays and gate changes for the departure of my next flight left me tense and wanting that stress-reducing sensation of smoke traveling down my windpipe. So back and forth I went, lugging all my carry-ons, magazines, soda and cigarettes, down the concourses and through the security check, every half hour or so. I'm positive that any cancer developing in my lungs was radiated right out of me by the numerous exposures to the X-ray machine. (Can I sue for that?)

I dread the day I'll land in a city and find I can't smoke anywhere, inside or out. But it looks like that day is coming, and that's the day I'll have an official police record - for refusing to let an officer pry a burning cigarette from my tightly clenched lips. (If I were to be executed for such an offense, would they let me have one last cigarette before the firing squad took their aim? Or would they still want to save my soul and last lung?)

The crusading mob has even added some former-capitalist Republicans, like Sen. John McCain, to its ranks - all of them trying to crush out an entire industry as if it were a giant smoldering butt. It's embarrassing that smokers, pariahs that we are, should drop to our knees with gratitude when politicians consent to designate even one tiny corner of the town as a smoking preserve - for otherwise there wouldn't be anywhere to smoke their pack of taxes.

I've recently toyed with the thought of a smoke-free life; I even have a supply of the patch and Zyban, slowly expiring as they wait for my motivation to kick in. But each new round of legislation hardens this smoker's strained heart, keeping me loyal to the Cause after 25 years of dedication to it. So long as there's the slightest chance of some sanctimonious anti-tobacco advocate smugly proclaiming me as part of their victory and adding me to their list of converts, I refuse to quit.

I say, let's just get it over with and outlaw cigarettes completely so that I can truly be the criminal I'm made out to be. Make a constitutional amendment and let a new wave of prohibition take hold of every happy little smoking lung.

Smokers would suddenly be cool again - all-night partiers reveling in our rebellion. Our "smoke-easies" would be as overflowing as a long-unemptied ashtray. The smoke-laden air would be thicker than the oxygen-deprived clouds found in the glass-enclosed smoking corrals of the Atlanta airport. The password to get in: two quick hacks and one long wheeze. Suspected undercover agents would be forced, of course, to blow three smoke rings to prove their loyalty and lifelong addiction. Inside, smoking-hot jazz would blare, daring us to jitterbug just as fast as our little black lungs can huff and puff. Our flippy little fringed dresses and oversized hip-hop zoot suits would be saturated by the glorious reek of stale smoke. Should the coppers come bursting in to our smoking sanctuary, guns drawn and bellowing "This is a raid!" we'd only have to threaten to blow some of our smoke their way to send them fleeing into the night, whimpering about allergies and delicate lungs. We'd cheer "Hurrah!" until the last one of us collapsed in a coughing fit of laughter.

Ah, those would be the days. And leaving us to our own self-destruction would be far more humane than the slow torture of making us sip glasses of smoky red wine at bars with no ashtrays.