Today I Saw Israel: No Smoking? No problem.

Israel recently passed a law that bans smoking indoors. It is a law that is making its way across the “civilized” world, it was inevitable that it would find its way to the Holy Land. I was in Be’er Sheva last weekend, a small (the fourth largest city in Israel, but far from anything substantial by American standards), college town in the heart of the Negev. I was visiting a friend. We went to a bar and within minutes of being inside, everyone that I was with had lit a cigarette. There were signs on the walls that said no smoking, but no one was bothering them. I looked around the bar and everyone was smoking. As my friends finished up their smokes and looked around for an ashtray, we realized that there were none. That is Israel. All that the smoking ban had done was to remove the ashtrays from the bar. So they threw their butts on the floor and continued with their night.