Posted on 08/02/2005 10:24:13 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
APPLETON (AP) - At Jokers Bar, the staff of eight has been laid off. Owner Tony Schaefer said he's now working the bar with his brother.
Schaefer is among many business owners still fuming a month after a ban on smoking at all indoor workplaces was enacted in this city.
The ban was approved by 56 percent of voters in an April 5 referendum and went into effect on July 1. Madison's similar smoking ban went into effect on the same day, although there was no referendum preceding it.
"We'll be closing up" if business doesn't improve, Schaefer said. "The sad thing is we don't even know if anyone would buy it."
Some say they have reason to fume.
Nearly three-quarters of the 64 businesses that responded to a request from the Appleton Post-Crescent reported sluggish sales in the past month, most from 10 to 40 percent lower compared with last July. Some reported sales off as much as 70 percent.
Many tavern owners in Madison have made similar complaints, and sympathetic members of the City Council have already tried once, unsuccessfully, to repeal the ban.
More than 30 tavern owners in Appleton have filed a lawsuit to repeal the ban, and the Common Council this month is expected to review a proposal that would exempt taverns and bar areas of restaurants, similar to a measure proposed statewide.
For now, sales are down 35 percent at Shark's Club Billiards Bar and Grill, owner Mitchell Roepke said.
"We're a blue-collar, working-class establishment and they're the smokers. ... I'm losing $11,000 in sales in July," Roepke said.
But Connie Olson, executive director of Community Action for Tobacco Free Living, a group that pushed for the ban, said some of the negative talk becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"All customers hear are bartenders complaining. Who wants to hear that?" Olson said. "They have to get past this personal vendetta. Don't do that to customers. They need to promote their businesses as smoke-free."
Restaurants reported faring better than bars.
Family restaurants like Applebee's and Perkins, and upscale places like Black and Tan, where smoking had previously been allowed at the bar, saw no ill effect in their July revenues.
At The Bar in downtown Appleton, regular lunchtime diner Carl Schuh of Black Creek compared before and after.
"It's cleaner, fresher and airier," he said.
Several businesses said they were boosting advertising and offering specials to encourage customers to come back, while still lobbying officials for a reversal on the ban.
This issue has nothing to do with the rights of a small group of people. It has everything to do with the rights of the owners of the establishments.
Furthermore, if you were to walk into our bar down in southern Mississippi (we still smoke here) and made a complaint that the smoke was harming you, in all good conscience for your safety, I would have to ask you to leave.
How did you put it? "Now go away!"
LOL! Now that's a payback from hell. teehee
"There's nothing in the world you can say that will justify your so-called "right" to inflict harm on others."
What harm is inflicted on others? In reality, I can prove that peanuts can cause greater harm than SHS, should we ban peanuts from bars? How about banning shellfish from seafood restaurants? Candles? BBQ grills?
Persons that don't want to subject themselves to several types of "dangers", are able to chose not to enter property with those dangers. Of course, you are to weak to do so without the use of government guns to eliminate SHS from all venues, just in case you might want to enter that property.
You're not in the least bit concerned about property rights.
Your sole concern is th your so-called "right" to smoke anywhere and anytime you please...everyone else be damned.
Stop using property rights as a smokescreen (no pun intended) and defend your so-called right to bodily harm others.
That's what this is all about.
That blindness will be the destruction of this once great Republic.
No one who supports the government taking of rights can call themselves a conservative.
Conservatives who dislike cigarette smoke have 3 choices of how to handle the situation:
1. Talk to the owner of their favorite establishments about it;
2. Seek out places that do not permit smoking;
3. Open their own establishments.
Only liberals see government mandate as the way to go....when it comes to smoking there are an awful lot of closet liberals on Free Republic
"This 'property rights' stuff is pretty tough to grasp."
I find it amazing that something so simple "to grasp" is so difficult for some folks. If I believe that a certain place in this big ole world is dangerous for my health, I simply will CHOOSE not to go there. It's about choices. We all have those choices and that's what freedom is all about.
Some have some disconnect in their brain that enables them to believe that if they wanna go somewhere, but they feel that place is dangerous to their health, we should all get together and make it safer for them....because, dam-gummit, I WANNA GO THERE! Childish, IMO.
Oooooohh, boy.
Here we go again. The same old "slippery slope" theory that eventually causes people like you to bring up things like peanuts and shellfish to justify their right to inflict bodily harm on others.
Sorry, that's not gonna fly here. There's no reasonable comparison to be made here.
"Probably not; but the problem is that the Smoking Taliban are not happy with "just" 75%."
True. It also proves that they are not willing to let markets decide. Socialism is buried in their hearts, no matter how red they think they are.
If it's my private property - you sure do ----- unless you choose the liberal means of crying to big brother government that I'm doing something you don't like and use the force of a gun to make me stop.
You, sir are no conservative.
Moving on, you're a totalitarian because you think the purpose of government is to inflict your wishes on others by force. You share that characteristic with totalitarians across the world. Congratulations.
You're a hypocrite because you tell me that "nothing in the world [can]justify [my] so-called "right" to inflict harm on others." And yet you attempt to justify the denial of private property rights of every business owner - an unquestioned harm - simply because of a personal preference of your own. Don't look in the mirror, but the destruction of private property rights has caused a lot more suffering in this world than smokers have. Somehow, you claim the right to harm others while denying that I can do the same. Hypocrite. On second thought, go right ahead and look in the mirror. Say "Do as I say, and not as I do."
Finally, when you write "You do not have the right to use a dangerous product anywhere and at anytime of your choosing...if it endangers others." I didn't say I did; that's a straw man argument. (It's also false anyway, the health consequences of second hand smoke have been grossly exaggerated by leftists, but if you can't even consider things like the importance of private property rights or understanding that I am not a smoker, I doubt you'll be able to grasp things like the methodological flaws in the second hand smoking studies.) The question here isn't whether someone does or doesn't have the right "to use a dangerous product anywhere and at anytime of your choosing...if it endangers others" rather, should business owners have the right to decide what their own policies ought to be, rather than having totalitarian busibodies like yourself dictate, through force of government, those policies.
Straw man arguments are for dishonest people, like leftists arguing that shall-issue permits will mean people will have the legal right to shoot anyone at the drop of a hat (which I actually heard on NPR once). You too apparently number among these dishonest people. Pity.
Once again, you've hit the proverbial nail on the head, Gabz.
No, you don't get it.
Yes, the world is changing. People are already deciding on their own not to smoke, and they don't need a government-nanny to force it upon them! Just because I see the parallels to Kelo doesn't mean there is a conspiracy, it just means that the liberals are gaining ground on their agenda, with the help of the CINO's like you.
You have no idea what my smoking habits are like, so you can't claim I'm a rabid smoker. I don't think I have a God-given right to smoke wherever I please. I, personally, choose to sit in non-smoking sections of restaurants, I don't smoke around non-smokers without asking permission, ect. I would hardly classify that as RABID.
What I am RABID about is anti-smokers like you that feel the need to force me to live a smoke-free lifestyle because YOU don't choose to smoke. You need to get over yourself, and don't curse at me again.
OH HOW true that is.. when I worked in a place that had Ins for all its employees, I was constantly attacked for taking smoke breaks. Always some idiot saying "you know.. you should really quit"
Meanwhile they blabbed on about how they ran to the doctor every day for every single cough and sneeze. Many of them also had many kids who were taken to the Dr for the same reasons.
That is so much bull hockey that you are going to have to open a new fertilizer plant. I've never seen a smoker lighting up a cigarette in the non-smoking section of a bar or restaurant. But I do see rabid non-smokers who go sit in the smoking section, then give the smokers dirty looks and wave their hands around.
Let the business owner make the decision. It's his business. It's your right not to visit his establishment if you don't like the way he runs it. It is NOT your right to tell him what he can and cannot offer to his customers.
Neither are you.
True. The "majority" is based on the total population, when clearly not everyone frequents these bars/taverns. I'd guess that while 25% of the population smokes, 75% of the bar/tavern customers smoke. At least while they are at the bar/tavern.
As a result, you are right. 25% of the customer base has convinced the government to use force (threat of fine/prison) to cater to the minority of a customer base, while the majority of that customer base is not given any choice and no market alternative to satisfy their wants/desires.
No, the bartenders where she lives will soon do what the ones in New York City did: Double prices and occasionally spill a drink on a person boasting about how much they love the smoke-free bars.
"Oooops, so sorry bitch"
Fat free milk is a worse punishment than water :)
Contrary to the popular belief of the nanny statists on FR (and elsewhere) I'm no militant smoker..........I'm polite and have no qualms about compromising. Heck, my favorite mexican restaurant is non-smoking, but it's by the owner's choice.
My back gets up when these holier than thou types insist they are within their rights to demand the governemtn remove the rights of private business owners. In other words, they believe they have more rights than the person who owns the property. I am uncompromising on that issue.
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