WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS

Mike Stout always comes back.

He has quit smoking several times in the past 45 years — he started when he was 14 — but he always picks up his Marlboro Light 100s again.

Now he wishes he’d never started.

“My breathing is slow,” the 59-year-old said. “I knew I’d feel better if I didn’t.”

As Stout stood with his wife, Sandy, for an evening drink at American Legion Post No. 37 in McAllen, where he serves as commander, he said some members have complained about the haze of tobacco smoke that sometimes develops.

The McAllen post still permits smoking in its tavern, but not at group functions in its ceremony hall, Stout said. The bar has extra ventilation to filter out the smoke, “but when it gets crowded, it still gets smoky,” he said.

Stout said he could see a day when smoking would not be allowed at Post No. 37, or any public place.

“Times change,” he said. “One of these days, there won’t be smoking anywhere.”

Times have changed indeed.

McAllen’s new smoking ban prohibits lighting up in restaurants and may mark a local milestone.

The ordinance does not apply to bars or any restaurant that makes 70 percent or more of its sales from alcohol.

But the local prohibition is just a small step in countless efforts throughout the Rio Grande Valley, the state and the nation in a shift against the deadly habit.

At least 461 municipalities nationwide have banned smoking inside restaurants, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.

Forty-five years ago, around when Stout began smoking, the anti-tobacco movement was in its infancy.

The U.S. Surgeon General released its first major report warning against smoking just eight years earlier. After inundating the public with TV advertising for years, tobacco commercials were banned from U.S. television in 1971.

But the cigarettes remained relatively inexpensive.

The average price for a package of cigarettes in Texas was 46 cents, about a third of the federal minimum wage of $1.60 an hour, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Dept. of Labor.

After more than four decades — and countless anti-smoking campaigns, laws and lawsuits — that price has jumped tenfold, to nearly $5 a pack today.

That’s not far off from the $5.85 federal minimum hourly wage, just raised in late July.

During that same period, tobacco taxes in Texas have risen more than six times from the 1972 rate — from 19 cents a pack then to $1.41 today.

And soon, smokers may have to shell out even more for their fix.

Last week, the U.S. Congress sent a bill to President Bush (on Thursday) that would tack an additional 61 cent charge on every pack of cigarettes to fund additional health insurance for low-income children.

Bush said in a private meeting last week that he would veto any children’s health insurance bill that would increase tobacco taxes, according to The Associated Press.

But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said upping the tobacco tax would deter new smokers and lower long-term healthcare costs.

“We want people to quit smoking, and as you raise the price of cigarettes . . . younger people smoke less and so you’re going to cut down on healthcare costs 20 years from now,” Grassley said Wednesday, while appearing on the C-SPAN program Washington Journal.

Closer to home, many area smokers said they would like to kick the habit but have a variety of reasons why they still light up.

Mike Cochrane said he started smoking 40 years ago, during basic training when he joined the military. Decades of smoking have probably compromised his health. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to stop any time soon.

“It’s probably the worst vice I have,” said Cochrane, 58. “If I continue it, it probably will kill me. But honestly, I enjoy smoking.”

Cochrane said he knows his habit bothers his wife, so he never smokes inside the house.

Same thing goes for when he is at the office, he said.

Yet, as Cochrane leaned against the bar with a Winston hanging from his mouth at Newman’s in McAllen on Tuesday night, he said he should still be able to smoke all he wants — in the right place.

“If I want to go into a bar and have a drink and a cigarette, I think I should be able to do that,” he said.

Unlike Cochrane, Anthony Smith said he has smoked for only about two years. But he shares the same sentiment on where he should be able to enjoy his Camel filters.

“If it’s a public place where people choose to go, you can’t expect people to abide,” Smith said, referring to bars and night clubs.

Anti-smoking policies vary among area employers.

Six cities in Hidalgo County have some degree of workplace smoking ban. Municipal workplaces in three cities — Alamo, McAllen and Weslaco — are completely smoke-free.

As the 25-year-old Smith puffed on a Camel Light during his 10-minute break at Convergys in Pharr late Wednesday morning, he said he doesn’t mind having to step outside to smoke, considering he does the same at home.

“If I don’t smoke at my house, I don’t expect to smoke at work,” he said.

Smoking is permitted in designated facilities owned by South Texas Health System, which manages several area hospitals and clinics, said spokeswoman Dalinda Guillen.

But all school districts in Texas are smoke-free by law, said McAllen school district spokesman Mark May.

“It just seems to be that it is a regular part of our lives now that you can’t smoke indoors,” he said. “I think we’re all pretty much ingrained to that.”

Even the Texas Department of Criminal Justice — which oversees the state’s corrections system — is tobacco-free, and has been for more than a decade, spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said.

Since the ban was imposed, cigarettes are still smuggled into prisons, but postage stamps and snacks have replaced smokes as the currency of choice among inmates.

“They don’t really have the freedom to choose,” Lyons said. “It makes basic sense from a health standpoint.”

Back at the American Legion, Noe Alvarado shot the breeze with Stout and his wife — both of whom smoke — over some beers at the bar.

The 41-year-old Alvarado said he last smoked a cigarette in April 1991.

But he didn’t quit smoking, he said.

“I don’t say I quit — I stopped,” Alvarado said. “Once you say, ‘I’m going to quit,’ you don’t do it.”

The last brand he smoked were Kool menthols, but Alvarado said he also had a penchant for Newports and Winstons.

He said he doesn’t know exactly why he stopped smoking, but that the cost of cigarettes was a factor.

“I don’t know. I was up to two packs a day — just the whole health concern, everything,” he said. “But I didn’t quit.”

Tobacco-related illnesses annually kill an average of more than 24,000 people in Texas alone, which ranks fourth among all states, according to CDC estimates.

Even tobacco companies admit that their products cause diseases such as lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema.

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris USA, which manufacturers Marlboro cigarettes and other brands, said smoking and secondhand smoke can cause health problems.

“We understand and agree that people should be able to avoid being around secondhand smoke,” he said. “We believe total bans on indoor smoking fail to respect the choices of both smoking and nonsmoking adults.”

But has it become harder to be a smoker in the United States today?

“I can’t speak for the audience that you’ve described,” Phelps said. “I’m not going to speak on their behalf as a group.”

Though he said he still enjoys his Winstons, Cochrane said he would like to stop.

“It’s very addictive and very hard to break,” he said.

Still on his break at Convergys, Smith said society has made it clear for him where and when smoking is acceptable.

“You just know when it’s appropriate and not appropriate,” he said.

And although he has smoked for two years, Smith said he would quit “one day.”

“I’m not going to get in a hurry,” he said.

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Jared Taylor covers Edinburg, the Delta region and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4439.