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Posted on 03/17/2004 8:52:49 AM PST by writer33

OLYMPIA _ Spokane-area restaurateurs, bar owners and anti-smoking activists are gearing up for battle over two proposed initiatives to limit smoking.

"We think we have the momentum," said Cheney's Tedd Nealy, a farmer and substitute teacher who's supporting the stronger of the two initiatives: a ban on indoor smoking in public places.

"If this has worked in six other states, including our biggest-populated state of California, it can work anywhere," he said.

Filed Monday by Breathe Easy Washington, a group of smoking foes, the tougher ban is backed by the state medical and dental associations. Co-chairman Kevin Phelps said the group expects to spend $1 million to $1.5 million collecting signatures and promoting the ballot initiative.

A second initiative was filed Friday by owners of smoke-friendly businesses. It would ban indoor smoking in areas with children, such as restaurants or bowling alleys. But smoking would still be allowed in bars, lounges, taverns and casinos.

"Our initiative is a more reasoned approach," said Linda Matson, executive director of the Entertainment Industry Coalition. The group's proposal would also prevent city or county officials from passing tougher bans, like Pierce County's health department did in January. Owners of bars and restaurants have appealed the Pierce County ban in court.

Both of the smoking-ban initiatives now face the same hurdle: Organizers have until July 2 to gather 198,000 signatures to put the measure on the November ballot.

At The Swinging Doors, a sports bar and restaurant in Spokane, owner Bob Materne -- a non-smoker -- doesn't like either initiative.

"This whole thing really infuriates me," he said. "Are they going to next say you can't smoke in your own house or your own car?"

Even the more modest initiative forces him to make a choice he doesn't want to: ban smoking or ban children. It's a simple business decision -- he'd have to ban kids and keep the higher-paying smokers -- but Materne said it would be a sad day. He's a grandfather, and sponsor of a youth hockey team. Families like his place, he said, because he's spent more than $20,000 on air scrubbers.

Proponents of the flat-out ban call it a workers' rights issue. Servers, musicians and Bingo hall staff work in smoky environments, inhaling the sort of second-hand smoke banned from offices years ago under Washington's Clean Indoor Air Act.

"Being a bartender or waitress is not a crime. It should not carry the death penalty," said Chris Covert-Bowlds, a Bellingham doctor supporting the Breathe Easy proposal.

That initiative was filed by Patty Carlson, a 50-year-old waitress at a Seattle bowling alley. After 25 years as a waitress and bartender, she said, she feels sick after every shift. Her eyes hurt. Her throat's sore.

"When I started doing this, people smoked on the bus, in the doctor's office, everywhere," she said. "Then, gradually, everyone else got protection."

In January, she joined a busload of anti-smoking advocates headed to Olympia to talk to lawmakers. But legislators weren't interested in passing a law to limit smoking further, she said. And she thinks she knows why: Second-hand smoke isn't much of an issue on the Capitol campus.

"There were signs all over that said, `No smoking 25 feet from the building,"' Carlson said.

Smokers' rights advocates argue that employees who don't like smoking can find work elsewhere. But in a depressed economy it's not that easy, Carlson said. She's a single mom, supporting a 16-year-old son, and said she put out hundreds of resumes before finding her bowling alley job.

At a news conference Monday, Carlson was flanked by musicians who said they're tired of performing in smoky clubs. They have no choice, they said.

"I've never had a cigarette in my mouth," said Anne Gilett, a Mount Vernon keyboardist who said her lung capacity is 50 percent of normal. "I really resent smokers literally taking away my breath."

A complete ban is better for workers than allowing smoking to continue in bars and gambling facilities, Nealy said.

"We wanted to do it completely: no smoking allowed in indoor areas," he said. "We don't want any loopholes."

Regardless of any initiative, business groups argue, there's a huge loophole. Indian tribal facilities, where the state has no jurisdiction, don't have to comply.

"That makes no sense economically, to make one whole sector of the entertainment industry exempt," said Matson, executive director of the Entertainment Industry Coalition.

What will happen under Breathe Easy Washington's ban, Matson predicts, is that smokers will take their money and move, en masse, to tribal restaurants and casinos. And that will cripple nontribal businesses.

"There's a whole lot of people who won't be `breathing easy' on the unemployment line," she said.

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