Talk:Smokeasy

Examples of smokeasies
Here, we have a local pool hall that will allow it's patrons to smoke.. however, for each cigarette they smoke, they are required to "donate" 25 cents prior to. Kinda hard to "verify" this since they won't want to be identified and all, but I'd like to make a mention. Fr0 04:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I happen to know from personal experience that there are a LOT of smokeasies in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. I'll add that to the article when I find a source. Jtrainor 05:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Background section
"Smoking bans are a type of sumptuary law, just like the prohibition of alcohol and drug prohibition.": This seems totally subjective, if not outright false. My opinion is that smoking bans are a public health issue. From the page on Sumptuary law: "Black's Law Dictionary defines them as 'Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures in the matter of apparel, food, furniture, etc.'" I don't think many people on either side of the debate would argue that this is actually what smoking bans are about. Certainly it is not the common point of view. Therefore I am deleting the sentence.eliah 01:44, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Today, however, sumptuary laws "are laws which regulate habits based on subjective concerns," including concern for health (like past and present prohibitions on drugs and alcohol - see the "today" section in sumptuary law). A very large number of people do not share that same concern. That's the whole reason that smokeasies have arisen - because of the sumptuary character of the laws at issue. I have reinserted the sentence, as it is necessary to the article.65.28.9.8 13:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * From the sumptuary law article, it is clear that this is a pejorative POV description, used primarily by opponents. It should not be presented as a neutral description. JQ 23:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)


 * No, it isn't. Even lawmakers use the phrase consistently with regard to all forms of prohibition based on subjectivity (see discussion in Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, by Everett Somerville Brown (1938)). The term should stay, because it is necessary to understand why these underground economies arise from smoking bans, as they do from all sumptuary laws. Sumptuary laws - prohibitions based on subjective notions - always create black markets. So it is with smoking bans. Like drug prohibition and alcohol prohibition, a prohibition on smoking also is a sumptuary law: it is based on a subjective opinion. Some proponents of smoking bans object to using the term "smoking ban" at all, preferring to say "smoke free law" or something akin to that. Should this article kowtow to that, too? Of course not. A horse is a horse, and a sumptuary law is a sumptuary law. The descriptor is perfectly accurate and should stay. 65.28.9.8 14:52, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The whole section is WP:OR, and the discussion above makes this even clearer. I've deleted it —Preceding unsigned comment added by John Quiggin (talk • contribs) 20:54, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Original research? Nonsense. It was properly cited. The section provides important background information about why this phenomenon occurs. I have re-added it; I also added additional citations to a comprehensive book about this subject which discusses the phenomenon in more detail.65.28.9.8 23:51, 7 October 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as I can tell, the book makes no reference to sumptuary laws. To write this article in an encyclopedic form, you need to find and cite a reliable source stating that tobacco bans are sumptuary laws. Taking "X says smoking bans are like alcohol prohibition" and "Y says alcohol prohibition is a sumptuary law" and combining them to get "smoking bans are sumptuary laws" is a clear example of illegitimate synthesis see WP:SYN. JQ 02:53, 8 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Umm, that comes from the very definition of sumptuary laws ("laws which attempt to regulate habits of consumption"). See the very first sentence of the article sumptuary law. Smoking bans clearly have led to smokeasies, just as alcohol prohibition led to speakeasies - all the many newspaper articles referenced in this article say the same thing. So, I've cited the more explicit ones. Grescoe's book also discussed how that happened (I doubt you went out and bought a copy in the last few hours). It didn't say anything about sumptuary laws; the definition of sumptuary laws in and of itself is enough for that. Yeesh... 03:58, 8 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.28.9.8 (talk)

The cited references following the statement that smoking bans have been described as a sumptuary law (Lapham, Amiel, Brooks) ALL explicitly discuss smoking bans as sumptuary laws. Maclean's is "Canada's leading weekly news magazine", and the article in question did discuss smoking bans as sumptuary laws, also discussing what "sumptuary law" means and how it is applied today. The article from Harper's Magazine also discussed smoking bans as sumptuary laws, and discussed in detail what "sumptuary law" means and how it is applied today. Lastly, despite the title, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, by David Brooks, a writer for the New York Times, discusses smoking bans as sumptuary laws in detail, as well as what "sumptuary law" means and how it is applied today. Clearly, all of these use the term "sumptuary law" and do so in the context of smoking bans. These works all are major works and all are publicly verifiable (see WP:V). They are not original research, and are not covered by WP:OR. Furthermore, that a published paper work no longer is online does not mean that the work has not been published in paper. Stu Bykofsky's article in the Philadelphia Inquirer is still an article, whether or not it is still published online. The citation is accurate.67.64.43.142 20:57, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Read the 10 citations regarding the description of smoking bans as a sumptuary law. User John Quiggin changed the language reasoning that the term "sumptuary law" only is applied to smoking restrictions by critics and citing a Google search of his own as evidence of that. Google searches are WP:OR and are not valid resources. Moreover, a cursory examination of the works cited do not bear out his assertion. Two are official court opinions not engaging in criticism, one is an impartial academic study from St. Louis University, four are academic works from political theorists and economists, only three of the ten are from critics. I say leave the language be.65.64.100.162 14:28, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Too many references?
Wikipedia articles need citations to back up contentious claims, but only up to a point - and I think this article has gone a bit overboard. The sentence likening anti-smoking laws to sumptuary laws has 11 citations; the one about 'smokeasies' in New York has 12! These statements don't need so many separate references; generally speaking, no claim needs more than two or three separate references, and more than four is simply overkill. Perhaps a few of the less-relevant ones in this article should be removed. Terraxos (talk) 14:29, 14 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Note there was somewhat of a discussion of this article's excessive-seeming references here: Wikipedia_talk:Citing_sources/Archive_21. — Epastore (talk) 21:43, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Term no longer used
There's no evidence of this term being used to any significant extent today, or that there is widespread and systematic violation of smoking bans in most jurisdictions. The term was a product of a controversy which has faded away. I've edited accordingly JQ (talk) 06:01, 21 January 2020 (UTC)