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By (NAME DELETED) - Staff Writer
Smokers' civil rights are violated every day, according to one Gatlinburg businessman, and he would like a chance to debate the issue with Phil Donahue.

Dr. Ira T. Lapides, owner of the Gatlin-Burlier Tobacconist in Gatlinburg, wrote a letter to Donahue in February asking the talk show host to do a show on smokers' rights.

"I think these issues have to be heard," Lapides said. "Smokers face housing discrimination, employment discrimination..the federal government wouldn't stand for that kind of treatment of a black person, or a woman, or an AIDS victim."

Donahue never responded to the letter Lapides sent in February, so now the smokers' rights activist is turning up the heat a little bit.

Lapides has started a petition asking Donahue again to do a smokers' rights show, and will take the idea to the Retail Tobacco dealers of America national convention in Chicago Aug. 26. Lapides is a member of the RTDA Board of Directors and of the association's executive committee.

Lapides will send the petition and his request to Donahue in the form of a giant Christmas card, since it will probably be close to December when the card is mailed, he said.

"I don't know of any other group of 28 million that is as quiet as the smoker is," Lapides said. "They really have been subdued as an individual."

Lapides, who once smoked cigarettes, then a pipe and now does not smoke at all, said smokers have not only been banished to smaller and smaller areas, they suffer intrusions even there, he said.

"The issue is that the smoker is not being left alone in the areas that have been assigned to him,' Lapides said. "What we're saying is, an individual in a smoking area ought to be left alone. Understandably, (in some instances) you cannot smoke at work. That isn't the end of it. The end of it is the individual won't be hired if he smokes in his own home, or if he smokes in his car on the way home."

Lapides said smokers do not receive the same understanding and concern the drug addict or alcoholic is apt to POST.

"Another issue is the issue of compassion--if the government is willing to say the smoker is more addicted to the cigarette than the heroin addict is to heroin, yet not provide (rehabilitation) -- it's highly unfair, it really is."

Those who smoke are often chastised by nonsmokers who fear they will be adversely affected by second-hand smoke, Lapides said, but "as far as I know, nobody has died from second-hand smoke. Plenty of people right here in this county have died from second-hand drinking."

Making cigarettes cost more than lower income smokers can afford by establishing the so called "sin tax" levied against alcohol and tobacco products will not POST rid of smokers, Lapides said.

"The only thing that's going to happen is that the smoker is not going to spend money on something else. You're going to heightening the neglect of children, heightening hunger, because people are going to smoke," Lapides said.

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