Minnesota Bars Skirt Smoking Ban by Declaring Patrons as 'Actors'

[megimoo]

 â€” All the world's a stage at some of Minnesota's bars. A new state ban on smoking in restaurants and other nightspots contains an exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some bars are getting around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume, and pronouncing them "actors." The customers are playing right along, merrily puffing away — and sometimes speaking in funny accents and doing a little improvisation, too. The state Health Department is threatening to bring the curtain down...


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335771,00.html
   

[CactusCarlos]

— All the world's a stage at some of Minnesota's bars. A new state ban on smoking in restaurants and other nightspots contains an exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some bars are getting around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume, and pronouncing them "actors." The customers are playing right along, merrily puffing away — and sometimes speaking in funny accents and doing a little improvisation, too. The state Health Department is threatening to bring the curtain down...


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335771,00.html
   

Seems pretty clever to me.  Smoking laws are stupid anyway. 

[Uhhuh35]

Seems pretty clever to me.  Smoking laws are stupid anyway. 

I don't smoke, I quit 20 years ago. But it seems to me:

A. Tobacco is a legal product.
B. Private businesses can allow whatever legal activity they want.
C. No one seems to care about this loss of freedom.