Up in Smoke.

President Obama has just signed a bill into law that will give the Federal Drug Administration power over tobacco. The new law will allow the agency to regulate and restrict cigarette advertising, sales and contents.

The law is probably a good thing, but I seriously doubt that it will accomplish much. It will probably lead the FDA to attempt restricting tar and nicotine in tobacco products. This will likely lead to battles, with the tobacco industry trying to lobby their friends in congress and ultimately dragging the FDA into court. In other words, the law - like most government measures - will prove to be far more expensive and far less effective than originally thought. The taxpayer will have to foot the bill. And ultimately little of substance will be accomplished.

Although the agency will now have the power, I doubt that the FDA will expend much effort in restricting substances added to cigarettes. Everything from ammonia to oak chips has been know to be added and some of the substances contain powerful carcinogens. And I would be surprised if the FDA will concern itself with contemporary curing techniques for tobacco. At least one study maintains that speeding up the process by heating the tobacco, which I understand is a widespread procedure in tobacco processing nowadays, creates some extremely deadly carcinogens. This replaces the old process whereby tobacco was allowed to simply dry in the barns.

A possible alternative to FDA regulation would be to outlaw tobacco altogether. This would probably cut down on smoking, but would also add another drug to the already long list of illegal drugs. Nicotine addicts - AKA smokers - would still be purchasing tobacco products, only now it would be from the local drug dealer instead of the local drug store.

It would, however, eliminate one strange phenomena: cash subsidies to tobacco farmers. There's an old axiom that states, "If you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less of something, then tax it." When it comes to tobacco, the US federal government does both.

I believe I have a better idea than either offering more power to another federal agency or putting people in jail for smoking cigarettes. The bill would basically outlaw the sale of tobacco, but would allow citizens to smoke anything they grow themselves. In other words, it would be a "you grow it, you smoke it" bill. You can smoke all the tobacco you want, as long as you grow it yourself. However, you can't sell the surplus crop. You can give it away, but you can't barter or accept money for it.

This would accomplish several things. (1) It would likely cut down on tobacco use. Getting a cigarette would no longer be as easy as walking down to the local convenience store. (2) It would put the tobacco industry out of business, thus eliminating their substantial lobbying power. And (3) It would eliminate the need for subsidies to tobacco farmers. After all, who is going to bother farming a crop they can't sell. The taxpayers would no longer be seeing their hard earned money go to subsidize lung cancer.

Nearly as important, the move would not give more power to the federal government, cost more taxpayer money, or create a whole new class of criminals in the form of tobacco users.

Perhaps more controversially, I would also extend this bill to cover marijuana. Just as with tobacco, the policy would be: you grow it, you smoke it. Procession would not be illegal. Smoking would not be illegal. But don't get caught by your local police trying to sell your product. To do so would be to face a hefty fine. Get caught enough times and you could do 90 days in your local jail: in other words, strong enough measures to discourage sales, but not self-defeating measures that would fill our prisons with long-term felons.

I recognize that the devil is often in the details and that there would be unforeseen consequences. But, I believe that a "grow your own, but no sales" tobacco/marijuana policy would ultimately do far more good, and save far more taxpayer money, than federal oversight, subsidization or outright prohibition.

Sadness in Sin City

If you look long enough at anything you'll sooner or later find a sad element. Whether the subject be fictional, non-fictional or biographical, sufficient examination will always yield the truism that part of the human condition is sadness. However, when the object of your research is Las Vegas, you don't need to look very long at all to find that element. For one thing, you're continually surrounded by people who foolishly believe that gambling is a means of increasing their income instead of just another form of entertainment. People who would never expect an evening on the town - complete with dinner and a show - to put money in their wallet will, for some reason, lay their paycheck down on a card table in hopes of striking it rich.

I became aware of another thought-provoking, and potentially sad, possibility during a recent visit to Vegas. In between sessions on a video poker machine, I had to visit the little gambler's room. (Okay, I'm being too cute here. I had to use the rest room). Standing there at a urinal, I noticed a Filipino custodian, walking down the row of porcelain receptacles, retrieving soggy cigarette butts and scrubbing away with a brush. Now, my father was a custodian for a good part of his life and I personally have custodial experience. But, both my father and I had jobs that included cleaning tasks outside the rest room. We at least got to spend part of our shifts vacuuming office floors and sweeping hallways. This man's entire working world lay within the confines of that casino bathroom. I thought at the time, what a sad existence that must be, spending your working life cleaning up other people's excretions.

Now, I recognize that the cleaning man may not have been sad at all. I've learned that a great deal of life enjoyment is a matter of attitude and serotonin. And I realize that in comparison to the improverished life he and his family may have left behind in the Philippines, this job might not be bad at all. But still, I couldn't help but think that if indeed America is moving away from a manufacturing-based economy, bypassing an information-based economy, and heading towards a service-based economy, then I've seen the future and it sucks.

If you leave the casino (and the restrooms) and walk the streets, you'll quickly see that the creative architecture and expansive neon up above overshadow an often grimy world down below. There are traffic jams and car accidents on the streets; there are hustlers and panhandlers on the sidewalks - all elements found in any major city, but writ large by the exploitative nature of Las Vegas.

Vegas lets people behave in ways they never would back home. That's part of its draw and charm. But it seems to have an especially strange effect on some young women. It inflames their desire to exhibit themselves. They parade around in dresses cut low enough to show more areola than discretion and short enough to show their Brazilian wax job. I'm not talking about pole dancers, cocktail waitresses and prostitutes - their selection of dress makes perfect sense. They're showing their bodies for money. The more skin on display, the higher their tips. But I'm talking about the "civilians," young women who leave their offices and college classrooms, travel to Vegas and immediately walk the streets and visit the lounges in costumes that would look at home on a Frederick's of Hollywood manikin. On top of it all, they travel those sidewalks in stiletto heels. I would think that adds an element of actual pain to the journey. It's arch straining and back breaking enough to walk the miles between casinos in running shoes.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm glad those women are out there. They're beautiful to look at. But, I wonder about their motivation. They're not out to actually get laid. Then their dress and behavior would, like those of the strippers, make perfect sense. Instead, they're aiming to feel sexy without having sex. They're actually competing against their scantily-clad sisters and they're keeping score by seeing how many men they can frustrate and how many free drinks they can con out of those men.

I'm not exactly sure what this all means, but I don't believe that it's terribly healthy. And I can't help but believe that there's a sad element to the girls' behavior.

Vegas

When you relate stories that happened before your time, or at least happened beyond your own experience, one often needs to rely a bit on legend. Legends are funny things. They often tell more about the human condition than about a particular event. They are often historically inaccurate but usually contain an element of truth. Such is the legend of Las Vegas's mobster days.

And here's how it goes. Once upon a time, organized crime ran the city's gambling industry. A visionary named Benjamin "Bugsy" Segal, representing the Sicilian Mafia, saw the potential of casinos and hotels in the Nevada desert. Segal (who, by the way was Jewish, not Sicilian) built the Flamingo Hotel and Casino on what would one day become the Las Vegas Strip. Segal didn't live to see his dream fulfilled. It seems that he had enemies, some of whom shot him dead in a friend's Beverly Hills home in 1947. However, the mob stayed on after Segal's demise, building more casinos and hotels and generally establishing a tourist economy that converted a small desert town into a thriving, cosmopolitan city.

Now I have no idea just how comprehensive the Mafia's control actually was over the local gambling industry, either on the Strip or downtown on Fremont Street. But I seriously doubt that, even in the mob's hay day, it was total and complete. The gangsters had to deal with returning G.I.s, running on high octane testosterone after kicking butt on the Germans and Japanese, as well as local vested political and law enforcement offices that had been handling criminals since the relatively recent frontier days when an offending outsider often found himself at the wrong end of a rope.

In addition, the mob had to continually deal with non-Mafia "business men," such as Benny Binion, a Texas gambler and casino owner who had personally killed at least two men and had probably helped kill several others before ever moving his operations to Nevada. Such men had a bad habit of not being intimated by eastern mobsters with vowel-ladened names or by anyone else.

None the less, the legend maintains that the Mafiosos controlled at least most of the Las Vegas casinos back in the day and that they did a pretty good job. They made huge profits, paid huge taxes, hired a virtual army of employees and, in general, proved to be good business men. In return for their contributions to the local economy, they were largely left alone as long as they treated the tourists well, kept petty crime out of the area and kept their portion of the city clean and safe.

Such were the golden days of Las Vegas, an era that, for all intents and purposes, lasted until Howard Hughes and his fellow representatives of Big Business gained control of the city and its casinos some time around the early 1970s. According to some Vegas visitors, the city has never been the same since. It has changed, and not for the better.

Leaving legend behind and drawing now upon my own experiences, I would have to say that the post-mob decline of the city must have been gradual. When I first visited Vegas in 1985, it was still a gambler's paradise and a tourist's Mecca. The casinos were exciting and well run, the rooms and food were cheap, and the streets were safe. You could walk from the Hacienda at the south end of the Strip to Foxy's Firehouse on the north and never encounter a panhandler, much less a purse snatcher or drug dealer.

I fell in love with the city and visited it three additional times through the coming years. And yes, things changed. Each time I returned the city had grown and the Strip had become more congested with hotels. The Hacienda was torn down for construction of Mandalay Bay. Foxy's burned down. Cheap buffets became harder to find, as did inexpensive beer and shrimp cocktails. Slot machines stopped paying off in coins and started paying off in slips of paper. Used playing cards, fresh from the blackjack and poker tables and which had previously been given away to hotel guests as souvenirs were now sold in the gift shops for a buck and a half.

There were other changes too. Panhandlers appeared on the streets as did an army of men handing out cards of nude women, advertising escort services. The sidewalks became dirtier as, I'm sad to say, did some of the casinos. Gang graffiti appeared on walls and even on casino symbols. The last time I visited, there was graffiti written across the stomach of the clown statue outside Circus Circus. In other words, the barbarians were no longer just at the gate; they were actually beginning to claim the Strip.

If you doubt that this sad process is still ongoing, I invite you to stand on a corner at the northern portion of the Strip and look to the west. Urban decay is encroaching.

Now, I'm not foolish enough to be nostalgic for a time when organized crime controlled anything, including Las Vegas casinos. Mobsters were not people to be idolized. They were ruthless and violent. But damn, I can't help but wonder what the Strip would look like if they were still in control. Would the panhandlers be forced to move along? Would the escort service advertisers be persuaded to find a less intrusive way to peddle their wares?

There is, of course, a far better way to clean up the Strip, or at least the streets and sidewalks of the Strip than to ask the mobsters to return. Surely, the hotel and casino owners and the Las Vegas city fathers can unite on an effort to return the area to some semblance of yesterday. More police in the streets and foot patrols on the sidewalks would be a good start.

If not, the already declining tourist trade will accelerate in its downward spiral. What the current economic situation has already started will become the norm. The Strip will not likely disappear, but the area's profitability will certainly drop. Las Vegas is no longer the only game in town. There is legalized gambling now across the country and Mr. and Mrs. America need only travel to their local Indian reservation to lay their money down. They are already inclined to stay in their home state because of economics and they certainly will do so if they find the streets of their old vacation destination dirty, unsafe and crowded with panhandlers.

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Writer's note for those readers who might think that I've made a common mistake: I fully realize that technically most of the Strip lies not in Las Vegas, but rather in the unincorporated Clark County areas of Paradise and Winchester. However, in most people's minds - including mine - the Strip is part of Las Vegas and so my writings and ramblings reflect this widespread conceit.