Bar Patrons

RJ Reynolds spokeswoman Carole Crosslan was willing to answer some questions about the program. She says the Camel bar program has been going since 1994 and now operates in 26 cities. She sees the program as a success at reaching smokers over the age of 21. When asked if this was a shift from earlier marketing efforts to teenagers -- something revealed during the tobacco lawsuits -- she responded: "There has never been a marketing program to communicate with underage smokers."

Crosslan sent a piece of e-mail to reiterate this point and also to make the comment that "Leveraging our partnerships with bar owners to fight smoking bans is not the goal of or reason for the Camel Club program. In one instance, we did communicate with Houston bar owners for two reasons: to make them aware of potential smoking-ban legislation and to encourage them to voice their opinion if they were interested in doing so."

One local advocate of anti-smoking ordinances is Tobacco Free Houston. Originally, the group's intention was to eliminate smoking from public places entirely. That didn't get through City Council without compromise after tobacco lobbyists made their pitches. Now the group is attempting to at least cut down smoking in restaurants, hotels and live-music clubs.

James Knight, the leader of the group, quotes independent surveys by Austin's Teleresources as showing that Houstonians not only favor smoking bans, but think they would go out more often to bars and restaurants if the ban were in place. He sees the ordinance as a threat to $26 million per year in cigarette sales, something tobacco lobbyists are not going to surrender lightly.

And those lobbyists have a lot of influence, he says. Knight says he keeps a list of the 20 lobbyists who lobby in Washington for the city of Houston, and says that half of them also work for tobacco companies.

In this escalating battle, almost no one -- the bars, the bands, even the anti-tobacco groups -- is free from the reach of the tobacco dollars.