10 points for creativity...

[Gato_Solo]

or...beating the ban.

All the world's a stage at some of Minnesota's bars.

A new state ban on smoking in restaurants and other nightspots contains an exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some bars are getting around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume, and pronouncing them "actors."

The customers are playing right along, merrily puffing away — and sometimes speaking in funny accents and doing a little improvisation, too.

And...as if on cue...

"It's too bad they didn't put as much effort into protecting their employees from smoking," grumbled Jeanne Weigum, executive director of the Association for Nonsmokers.

The Health Department this week vowed to begin cracking down on theater nights with fines of as much as $10,000.

"The law was enacted to protect Minnesotans from the serious health effects of secondhand smoke," Minnesota Health Commissioner Sanne Magnan said. "It is time for the curtain to fall on these theatrics."

What they fail to realize is that these people are adults, and that there are certain risks to every job. Second-hand smoke, which we all know is a crock, anyway, is a hazard/risk for people who choose to work in a bar. Same as silica sand is a risk to people who make bricks, and heat stress is to people who work in the steel industry.

You may now cue the WHO drones who will make outlandish claims and cite studies that have mysteriously disappeared...