Ladies Nights, Happy Hours.. No Smoking Nights?

Not yet, but apparently that is the ultimate objective of the “Ain’t No Smoking Nights”:

At least 40 pubs and restaurants will go smoke free in the busy Gemmayzeh bar district Tuesday, as the “Ain’t No Smoking” campaign rolls out its long-anticipated third installment Tuesday.

I’m not sure how I feel about this movement. On one hand, I appreciate the gradualist logic of slowly getting people used to no smoking in bars. On the other , I’m afraid that no-smoking days will become a substitute for the smoking ban law.

Besides, There’s a reason why this event is happening only once a year: If 40 bars decided to take part of the event and one bar in the neighborhood stayed out, that bar will have much better business than all the rest. This creates an incentive for the others to cheat and in the end the dominance of smoking reasserts itself.

There is no substitute for a total ban, if only to make the playing field more fair.