It's going to cost New Yorkers $7 to buy a pack of 20 cigarettes now. That won't help Jim Daugherty, who is nearly 70 years old and does most of his smoking in Florida. He'd quit at $7 a pack, he says. They're $2.50 a pack in the Sunshine State. Maybe we should call his congressman, get him working on some new taxes.

        Most people who smoke really don't want to, anymore than people who drink too much live for the 3 a.m. conga drum rattling their heads. It's hard to quit. For some, it's impossible.

        My dad smokes. A few years ago, he had surgery to remove a cancerous growth on his vocal cord. He had 30 radiation treatments. His throat felt like high noon on Mercury. He still smokes.

        He has tried every cure short of surgically removing his lips. There were the common remedies: gums, patches, a drug that made him sick. There were the desperate remedies: acupuncture and hypnotism.

        There were old-fashioned guilt trips, taken at the urging of well-meaning family members. “We want you to live long enough to enjoy your grandchildren,” my wife once said to him.

        We treat Jim Daugherty like a leper, of course. He smokes outside at our house, and his. In some restaurants, smoking is still allowed, in small, dark corners by the kitchen or the bathrooms. We won't allow him to smoke there, either. We ask for the non-smoking section, where all the healthy and righteous people are. If we're feeling charitable or, more likely, rushed, we'll take a chance on “first available.”

        Everyone has rights here: Supposed murderers; accused child-molesters; cheating heads of giant corporations who don't go to jail after they have ruined the lives of thousands of people. Zaccharias Moussaoui wants to kill Americans and most certainly would try if he weren't locked up for his supposed part in 9-11. He has rights.

        Smokers have rights you could fit on a match head.

        If you live in California, you can't smoke in public anywhere. There aren't smoking sections in bars or restaurants or stadiums. If you want to smoke in California, try a closet in a remote part of your house.

        Have you been to California lately? There are problems greater than smoking. But targeting smokers is easy and makes you popular.

        There is a referendum on the fall ballot in Florida aiming to do much the same. My dad lives in Florida. At least he has a decent closet or two.

        “Blessed be the sanctimonious, for they have all the answers” is how my father feels about that. There was a slight chance he could have lost his voice after his surgery. It would have been like a rose losing its red. Jim Daugherty speaks in Big Brass Band.

        (Of his adopted home state, he says, "The average age is 92, the average temperature is 92, the average speed of a pick-up truck on the interstate is 92.” But that's another column.)

        He doesn't feel great about his habit. We don't dog him about it anymore, because we don't want him to feel worse.

        He's not stupid. He knows the costs. He understands non-smokers have trouble breathing in tight quarters when he lights up. He realizes the rights of many outweigh the cravings of the few. He's curmudgeonly about it. Also, charitable.

        If only we nonsmokers were the same.

        I wish they'd jack up cigarette prices in Florida to $7 a pack. I wish they'd charge $7 just to look at a pack and $7 more just to think about them. It'd be nice if they banned them. But only because it would ease some minds in my family, not the least of which would be my dad's.

        Smoking stinks. So do lots of equally bad habits we condemn, yet permit. Nudge me when we shutter all the drug treatment centers.

        I see my father at my house in January, outside in the snow, smoking. I don't judge him. I only worry.

        E-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com.

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