Let's be clear about what's happening here. San Francisco, a city that has effectively decriminalized open-air drug use in multiple neighborhoods, a city where you can walk through the Tenderloin and encounter substances that would make a DEA agent weep, now wants to tell adults they can't light up a cigarette outside while enjoying a beer.

The cognitive dissonance is staggering.

No one is arguing that cigarette smoke is good for you. It's not. But we're talking about outdoor patios at bars — establishments that exist specifically for adults to engage in a legal vice. If secondhand smoke in an open-air environment is now an unacceptable public health risk, the Board of Supervisors has a very long list of actual outdoor health hazards they might want to address first.

There's also a real economic argument here. Bar owners — many of whom are small business operators barely hanging on after the pandemic — rely on their patio spaces to draw customers. Adding another regulation, another reason for someone to just stay home or head to a less restrictive city, is the kind of policy that looks good in a press release and terrible on a balance sheet.

As one SF resident put it, "We can't fix the stuff that's actually killing people, but sure, let's go after Marlboro Lights on a patio."

If you're a public health crusader, fine — make your case. But at least have the self-awareness to acknowledge that a city drowning in fentanyl deaths probably has bigger priorities than policing legal tobacco use among consenting adults in open air. The government doesn't need to be your outdoor bouncer.

Let people smoke their cigarettes. Fix the real problems.