No one despises cigarette smoke more than I do - ask anyone who stands outside our office and smokes. “Smoking is bad for you” is, for some Stranger staffers, the only words they’ve ever heard come out of my mouth. I’m a nag, I admit. I hate smoke - and I love going to California or New York and having a drink or running around all night in clubs and not stinking of other people’s smoke.

But I can’t support 1-901 and personally plan to vote against it. The Stranger’s edit board hasn’t met with backers of the initiative yet, so the paper doesn’t have a position yet, but our endorsement seems unlikely. As Eli Sanders detailed in this story, the smoking ban includes a provision that isn’t a part of any smoking ban in any other city or state: It not only bans smoking inside bars and restaurants but outside too. It would be illegal to smoke within “within 25 feet of any door, window, or air vent that leads into a protected public space, such as a bar, club, restaurant, office building, or vehicle used by the general public.”

Hey, I hate smoke. Sometimes I hate smokers - they can be rude and inconsiderate and many of them think it’s cute when their smoke bothers others. But I don’t hate smoke or smokers - or bar and club owners - so much that I want to ban smoking on the sidewalk in front of the club, or on the open-air decks that club owners in cities and states with smoking bans have built to accommodate their smoking patrons. But what I really want to avoid is giving the police an excuse to selectively harass clubs. I-901 includes fines of up to $100 for folks smoking within 25 feet of a door to club. I doubt that old farts and frat boys smoking in front of, say, Fox Sports Bar will be fined. But the smoking patrons of gay watering holes, music and hip-hop clubs, and noisy bars would be fined and harassed.

Seattle’s police department has an awful record when it comes to fucking with and fucking over bars and clubs. If 901 passes, the SPD will target the smoking patrons of bars and clubs that the department doesn’t like. I can’t vote for 901 because I don’t want to hand the police another stick they can use to beat bars, bar owners, drinkers, and music fans.

The authors and backers of I-901 really fucked up. If an anti-smoking Nazi like me won’t vote for it, they’ve got a problem.