Close, and some cigars.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: DEVON'S PUB

FOR FIVE YEARS NOW, DEVON'S PUB IN SOUTHEAST DENVER HAS been a typical neighborhood bar, with a dozen stools for bellying up to a polished wood bar, a pool table in back, a couple TVs showing sports, and shelves of cigars along a back wall behind sliding-glass doors.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Ah, those fine cigars: more precious than anybody at Devon's could have known.

Literally overnight because of those stogies, the little bar on East Hampden Avenue and Happy Canyon Road went from commonplace to practically one of a kind. I learned this firsthand on the eve of the Fourth of July when a man seated to my left at the packed bar ordered a whiskey-and-coke and added, "and I'll take an ashtray and a book of matches." Then he fired up a Marlboro, a brazen act, given that the statewide smoking ban had taken effect just two nights earlier.

I looked around expecting to see somebody rushing up to scold the defiant smoker. Instead I saw just about everybody in the place was puffing on a cigarette or had one burning in an ashtray. What gives?

The Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act bans smoking in indoor areas open to the public, including taverns and restaurants. But exemptions were granted for places established as "cigar-tobacco bars" with at least 5 percent of revenues tobacco-related.

Devon's is one of those exempted cigar-tobacco bars. In fact, it started out as a cigar store 10 years ago before becoming a regular pub in 2001. Two years ago ownership reduced the cigar-smoking area and the walk-in humidor to make more room for general mingling, but the pub kept several shelves of premium cigars humidified behind sliding-glass doors. That small humidor is why Devon's is now one of the state's few bars where you can smoke and drink inside.

Fine with me. I'm a non-smoker, but I was against the smoking ban.

Among my reasons: the negative impact it will have on small-bar businesses; because exempting casinos renders the ban untenably preferential and political; and because studies attesting to the harmfulness of second-hand smoke have been countered convincingly enough for me by opposing studies.

My mom was a smoker, and it led her to a premature death at the age of 69. But despite my 18 nonstop years of inhaling second-hand smoke, I've never had any lung problems. And if I develop any in the future, there will be dozens of causes ahead of second-hand smoke to suspect, ranging from my inhaling finish-stripping chemicals in an antique furniture-refinishing...