Friendly Sons, Fight for Children get D.C. smoking ban exemption for 2010 events

Monday, March 08 2010

By Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writer

For decades, Washington power brokers have gathered on Saint Patrick's Day to toast, and in some cases invent their Irishness with Guinness, Kelly green cummerbunds and cigar smoke.

Last year, they survived without the smoke. But not everyone was happy, to the point that one legislator has pushed an emergency bill in the D.C. Council to let the stogies burn next week, and tried to make a permanent exception to the city's smoke-free laws.

Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) has asked his council colleagues to keep tradition alive for the all-male Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and another organization, Fight for Children, which hosts an annual smoke-filled professional boxing fundraiser...story continues here