Chaucer, it ain't.

Dallas City Council approves $165,674 expenditure to hire new smoking law enforcers

On the heels of passing a sweeping municipal smoking ordinance expansion last month, the Dallas City Council this morning voted to spend $165,674 in contingency reserve funds to hire new smoking law enforcers.

The expenditure is necessary, City Manager Mary Suhm said, in order to adequately address complaints about smoking occurring within buildings such as bars, billiard halls and most other indoor workplaces. Smoking in such venues becomes illegal come April 10. The expenditure funds three new "sanitarian" positions in the Environmental and Health Services Department.

http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/01/dallas-city-council-approves-1.html


It was all Tony’s fault.

We were at Michael’s house, like most every Friday night. His parents worked nights at the Bureau of Health, checking the menus of the area restaurants against shipping manifests to make sure they were in compliance with the various Meat-Consumption Reduction laws, so we had the place to ourselves.

We were in the basement. Michael and I were in the “lab” we’d built in one corner. Tony was keeping one eye on the security monitors and the other on the antique pinball machine he was playing. Eric was at the desk, patiently manipulating higher-order algorithms to manufacture realistic-looking “results” from our “experiment.”

Looking back, I can’t believe we got away with it for so long. A handful of bored high-school students against the all-seeing eye of the government? Yeah, you laugh now, but at the time, we thought we were oh-so clever.

Back then, every citizen enrolled in the Governmental schools had to complete a series of courses in Earth Stewardship and Cultural Sensitivity, among others. If you didn’t complete these courses, you wouldn’t be likely to get a job. When three out of every five people worked for a Governmental Agency, it was an incentive to pass the courses. Of course, if you didn’t want to work, that was your right, too, and there was a multitude of Governmental Assistance programs – each with it’s own office, staff, mission statement, and bloated budget – available to help you.

As long as you passed the courses.

It was Eric that first suggested the plan to me, and once he convinced me, I talked it up to the others. We went to our Earth Stewardship professor and told him we wanted to prove the connection between carbon dioxide and Global Warming. It didn’t matter that huge Governmental Agencies with a thousand times the manpower and infinite access to money and equipment hadn’t yet managed to do it, he admired our pluck and Yes We Can! attitudes, so helped us with the environmental permits we needed in order to purchase old-fashioned filament light bulbs, real wood, and a small gas generator. He even allowed us to clone his gas ration card so we’d have the juice to run everything, and made suggestions on which hockey-stick graphs were easiest to produce. He even got us an Educational Exception permit for ordering the seeds from the Governmental germplasm warehouse.

We’d specified balsam fir seeds when we presented the plan to our professor, but Eric ran the permit chips through his home-built (and highly illegal) off-the-network computer and converted them.

When the package came, we couldn’t believe we had gotten away with it. Inside the recycled cardboard box was a plain brown envelope. Within that, the seeds of our own destruction.

Tobacco.

We were all heavy smokers, sometimes having as many as three in a week. We had our network of suppliers, people who maintained a plant or two hidden in abandoned talk radio stations or burnt-out libraries. Not only was it a very expensive habit, it was getting more and more difficult to find a place we could smoke in peace. Especially after the city developed the Sanitarian Corp.

The Sanitarians’ mission is to patrol the city and write up Health Code infractions. Like their counterparts in other Governmental Law Enforcement Agencies, the majority of their operating budget comes from the fines they impose. Whenever they need more money, the State creates more laws. Even if the old prison system hadn’t been converted into a Governmental Counseling Group, there was no way they’d be able to hold all of the criminals these new laws create, so the punishments are always fines.

Then, smoking in public was a $10,000 first-offense, with attendant Addiction Counseling. Even smoking in your own home required a permit, the agreement of your neighbors, and annual Interior Environmental checks. The number of places you could smoke in the city had dwindled to about a dozen small lots scattered around the perimeter. The public transport didn’t even get out that far; you had to walk the last mile or so – not something smokers were likely to do if they could help it.

So our brilliant idea was not only to grow our own tobacco, but set up a place in Michael’s basement where we could smoke in peace, using the “experiment” to cloak our criminal behavior.

On that particular Friday night, I had just lit up one of my eco-specials, a cigarette made out of one small leaf rolled into a loose tube. It had no paper, which meant no trees were harmed, and had no filter, which meant no wads of cotton would blight the landscape. I didn’t expect to get one of the monthly Green Citizen Awards, however.

I was just settling back against the cushion under the exhaust vent when Tony burst in.

“Sanitarians, Davey!”

I jumped up, frantically burying the cig in the can of baking powder we kept to mask the smell of old tobacco, while Tony misted a little ammonia into the air. The Sanitarians sometimes use dogs. I joined Eric and Michael at the monitors, watching as the doors on the black vans slid open, disgorging body-armored agents.

Michael looked pale, even in the glow of the full-color HD monitors. His parents were going to kill him, once they found a new place to live, that is. Depending on the size of your garden, the Sanitarians have license to seize your home; a practice entrenched by the decades-long War on Drugs. Even though we never sold any of our yield, they could have still charged Michael with distribution since the rest of us didn’t live there.

“How did they find out? How did they find out?” Michael chanted over and over. A mantra to try and block out the reality of what was happening.

“Maybe one of your neighbors smelled it,” Eric said. “Doesn’t matter. They’re here, now.”

“Think they’ll believe it’s just a GW experiment?” I mused.

“Not if they ask for the original permit chips,” Eric said. “They’ll find where I wiped them.”

“Then we may as well go all the way,” Tony said from the corner. We looked over to see that he was now holding two pistols.

We were in shock. Up to this point, we were in deep shit, yes, but nothing we wouldn’t eventually recover from. Some counseling, some fines, some Community Service. A lawyer that was devious enough could probably even stop the seizure of the house.

The guns changed all that.

Once an illegal weapon is brought in, all bets are off. The Sanitarians, just like the other Enforcers, are authorized to use extreme prejudice under the Retroactive Abortion Act. It’s reasoned that any citizen that circumvents the multitude of laws against buying guns, owning guns, and carrying guns (not to mention all of the similar laws regulating ammunition), as well as resisting all of the psych profiles and conditioning built in to the system, is an incredibly dangerous individual who is beyond redemption, and shouldn’t have been allowed to be born to begin with.

“T-Tony?” Michael stammered. “What the fuck are you doing with those?”

I’ll always remember how tired Tony looked at that moment.

“I can’t take it anymore, guys,” he said matter-of-factly. “You can’t go anywhere without cameras following you. Every purchase is entered into a database. Every call is listened to. Every net search is snooped. All of our homework is analyzed, and all of our activities have to be approved. It drives me crazy, sometimes.”

“Tony,” I pleaded, “just put the guns down. Seriously, man, we’ll get through this as long as they don’t see those.”

He smiled. “Sorry, Davey. I’d rather not spend the rest of my life under the microscope. I want to be absolutely free for once.”

And with that, Tony ran up the basement steps and disappeared into the dark house. We jumped for the monitors, watching with growing alarm as it became evident that Tony had been spotted in a second-floor window. We didn’t have sound on the CCTV system, but we heard the faint reports of Tony’s guns. One of the Sanitarians suddenly clutched his arm and spun down to the ground. He was dragged away by those nearest him while others brought out a heavy tube. We didn’t know what was in it at first, but when it fired, the delicate circuits in our cameras died under the intensity of the glare.

Magnesium.

I don’t remember much about the rest of that night. There was only one way out of the basement, and none of us wanted to go out while the Sanitarians had their tempers up. By the time we smelled the smoke from the burning house, set alight by the magnesium flare, it was too late. It collapsed on us shortly thereafter.

Ironically, I survived because I’d cowered in the very lab that caused the whole thing. The irrigation system we’d rigged dropped enough water around me to partially put out the fire, though I still lost my legs when a joist fell across them. My three closest friends are dead, and I live with the guilt of knowing I had a part in convincing them to try and thwart the law.

I know you kids are thinking that I just give these speeches to you as part of my Community Service requirement, and that is how it started. But I fulfilled those hours long ago, and now I continue visiting groups like your Healthful Behavior Awareness class here to serve as a warning. Not just because the Sanitarians pay me a stipend, but because I’ve genuinely learned my lesson, and hope that you’ll avoid the same mistakes I made.

Thank you for listening.