Once it became apparent that the non-smokers were getting their way, they laughed hysterically when I said, "You wait and see, now they'll go after the fatties and their snacks and fast-food.

Who's laughing now?  It must be all those people who gained 50 pounds when they quit smoking, because now they are going after their sucky candies, fast-food and snacks.

Like all babies, the baby steps grew with each stride into full-grown giant steps where smoking has been banned in entire cities, and efforts are underway to ban it from apartments and condos.

I spoke too soon.  The Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas, which already banned smoking in ALL outdoor areas of the tiny city has now banned it in all apartments and condos.

When I lived in apartments and visit people living in apartments or condos I never, ever smelled smoke coming from an apartment, unless it was on fire.  The stench of cabbage cooking or fish broiling, yes.  Smoke, no. 

It really makes so much sense, too, to ban smoking in apartments and condos when you consider that they are adjacent to parking lots and freeways where tenants breath in a constant stream of exhaust fumes that are far more dangerous than secondhand smoke.

Levine is happy with no smoking, because of his asthma, and I would be thrilled if all fragrances were banned from the planet.  No more running through the perfume department holding my breath to get to a safe fragrance-free zone.

No more stepping off an elevator with a pounding headache, because some heavy-handed person od'ed on Estee Lauder.  No more having to sniff bottles of detergent or bars of soap to see if the stench from over-perfuming is leaking from the cap or paper wrapper.

Light Bulb Lloyd doesn't like the words nanny state, yet he saw fit to legislate the minutia of stores dealing with plastic bags.  Agreed the number of plastic bags used in the state each year is as appalling as is the damage they do to the environment and the wildlife that gets tangled up in them.

Californians use 19 billion plastic grocery bags every year-- six billion of which are used in Los Angeles -- and adds up to 147,038 tons of trash for the landfills.  They may be biodegradable when left in the sun, but once in the landfill and covered with other trash and dirt, biograding vanishes.

It's one thing to pass Levine's well-intended law mandating stores to provide recycling bins for used plastic bags.

But let's get real here.  How many people are going to schlep fistfuls of wadded up, sticky plastic bags back to the store for recycling.  Hell, we can't even get people to put the correct things in the proper trash cans, so most certainly they aren't going to bring the bags back to the market.

Even though part of the law requires that these same stores sell reusable bags, human nature says they'll be forgotten and left at home, and how are they to decide how many bags they are they going to take to store even if they remember to take them?

Fortunately, the City of L.A. is way ahead of Levine.  Months ago they sent around notices telling residents we can now put plastic bags in the blue bins.

Now the question is, how many people know they can do that?  From what I've noticed, half the population doesn't know what trash goes in which colored can, especially gardners and workmen, even if they live in the city.

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