It’s time to give up. Yesterday, bar owners were foiled in their attempt to get the provincial ban on smoking indoors lifted temporarily for the holiday season while they fought to have the ban lifted full time. Quebec Superior Court Justice Hélène Le Bel ruled that “the harm alleged,� by the smoking ban, in the form of lost revenues by bar owners, was not enough for her to consider granting the temporary reprieve.

The revenue loss “is not of sufficient magnitude to justify the injunction,� Le Bel wrote, and frankly, the loss of revenue is unfortunate for those people who make their living, especially in pubs or bars, but is there anybody out there who thinks West Islanders need to spend more time holed up in a dark bar with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other?

The fact is, sometimes, you must go to lengths for your habits. Case in point: the suburban couple who both smoke, but are determined to spew zero secondhand smoke in the house they share with their children. They take turns going outside to indulge, even if the temperature is minus-thirty. You’ll never see them light up in their house. Why? Because they care about the health of the people around them. That’s a consideration every smoker must make in a confined area where there is no ventilation and little air movement.

That’s just the way it goes.

Look at it another way. Every cigarette you don’t have in a bar is more time you get to spend outside, socializing with other smokers, and smoking habits. Every cigarette you don’t have in a bar is a cigarette you might have outside, where, forced to socialize with other smokers, you might meet someone new and interesting.

Many bar owners have resorted to heating terraces in an effort to keep smokers from leaving and taking their dollars with them to ‘feed the demon,’ but apparently they don’t all have the resources to heat terraces.

Critics of the smoking ban have even blamed possible sexual assaults on the smoking bans, implying that since smokers cannot leave with their drinks, it’s become that much easier to slip GHB, the date-rape drug, into someone’s drink. There can be a provision built into the law that would allow people to stow their drinks safely, or if they’re that nervous about it, they can simply finish their drink and then go outside to smoke before buying a new one. Or, they can just give up smoking. To each their own, but second-hand smoke is poison. Don’t let anybody tell you different.

Think outside the box, bar owners, because this smoking ban probably isn’t going away anytime soon.