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GATLINBURG -- A local businessman isn't just blowing smoke about his right to light up, and he's willing to starve a little to prove it.

Ira Lapides, owner of the Gatlin-Burlier Tobacconist in Gatlinburg, said he will go on a hunger strike Nov. 11 if the Donahue show does not grant him an opportunity to tell tobacco smokers' side of the story.

"Enough is enough," said Lapides, who holds a doctorate in economics. "I think the electronic media has an agenda and that is one of anti-smoking. The way to make their side the most "politically correct" is to exclude the side that I represent."

Lapides has been trying to POST an appearance on the Donahue show since February 1992. He has sent producers of the show a Christmas card and petition containing several thousands of signatures asking the famous talk show host to do a show on smokers' rights. However, he has been repeatedly denied access, he said.

"If you don't have access to the electronis media, which I believe shapes our opinions, then you don't have much of a voice," he said. "I hope by participating in a passive resistance, I can POST my hands on that microphone."

Lapides said he has seen a change in smokers' attitude over the past several years.

"In the past, the smoker could smoke anywhere on the bus, but was content to move to the back of the bus," he said. "Now, they can't smoke at the bus stop. I don't know of any other group of 28 million that has been as quiet as the smoker. They realize now they are seen as second-class citizens, or worse."

Lapides said if the kind of discrimination smokers have to put up with was dished out to any other minority, the courts would simply not stand for it.

"But you've got court-approved discrimination," he said, citing the recent California case in which a woman lost custody of her child to the father because she smoked. "She isn't a child abuser. This is an invasion of personal rights."

Lapides also said smoking is a "handy-dandy" way to discriminate against women and black people.

"By percentage of population, blacks and women make up the larger population of smokers," he said. "This bias becomes a handy tool for concealing job and housing discrimination."

Lapides said he is also concerned about the tobacco industry as a whole.

"I blame a certain group of senators and businessmen from California," he said. "The busybodies from California, who incidentally don't grow tobacco, don't care if they put approximately 2.6 million people in the 13 Southern states out of work."

Lapides has sent a packet of information to Donahue show producers. This packet includes letters to Elizabeth Allen, vice president of Multimedia Entertainment, from Sevier County executives (NAMES DELETED), all testifying that Lapides would be a persuasive and rational speaker.

"Because of my deep commitment to equal speech, I truly am unwilling to give up my intent to undertake my action of passive resistance and thus I beg you to fulfill my desire to have a public hearing," he writes in a letter to Donahue representatives. "Please allow me to forgo the personal sacrifice which has become necessary to call attention to these censored views on these undebated issues."

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