When they forced a smoking ban on the state of Maine, a lot of businesses closed and the ones that stayed open had to cut back staff and reduce hours. This BS about smoking bans not choking the economy is just not true!
Posted on 01/30/2006 4:54:07 AM PST by SheLion
When it comes to deciding whether smoking should be allowed inside their businesses, local restaurant and bar owners said they want the SmokeFree Baytown Coalition to butt out.
The coalition recently announced their plans to ban smoking in all public buildings and work sites. Coalition spokesman Dr. Richard Ehlers said the city smoking ordinance should be strengthened to allow non-smokers the right to clean air.
Ehlers said the facts are crystal clear and they show business will not suffer because of a more restrictive smoking ordinance.
“It is our position that the economic impact of this ordinance would be negligible,” Ehlers said. “There will be no economic detriment to local businesses.”
In 1999, a city ordinance forced restaurants to include a ventilation system and a separate smoking section for no more than 50 percent of the restaurant’s seating capacity. The ordinance also banned smoking within 15 feet of the entrance of a public place.
While nothing has been decided, talk of a more stringent policy has upset business owners who said the decision to allow smoking in their establishment is theirs alone.
Dawg House Cafe co-owner and chef Maria Zoes said she does not feel any one should interfere with her private business.
“It’s not fair for the government to intrude with my business,” she said. “The next thing you know they’re going to intrude in my home as well.”
The Dawg House Café on 104 N. Main St. currently keeps its smokers outside on the patio. While Zoes said customers should judge her restaurant solely by the quality of food and service, she believes the lack of smoking inside the restaurant affects sales.
“ I know if we had a smoking area, a lot more would eat and smoke here and stay longer,” she said. “It’s an inconvenience for customers to go out in the rain or the cold to smoke.”
A petition to allow smoking began last week at the City Club bar, 108 West Pearce St., and so far, about 80 people have signed it, bartender Monica Pelc said.
Although the City Club owner was unavailable for comment, Pelc said she does not believe the city should have the right to tell businesses what to do, especially since owners pay for property taxes.
“It’s not for the city to be able to tell them what they want to do in their own business or their own home,” she said.
Pelc said she believed the ordinance would hurt sales because most of the bar’s customers are smokers.
“When the bar’s full, everyone smokes,” she said.
Tammy Lilly, bartender at the Sun Brite Bar, 622 West Main St., said a petition to allow smoking was also planned in the near future.
Lilly said she was worried about several customers who said they were not coming to the bar if they were not allowed to smoke inside.
“They say if they can’t smoke here, they won’t come here,” she said. “They’ll just drink at home.”
However, the argument about smoking bans reducing revenue in businesses that previously allowed smoking is questionable, according to previous studies done in cities that have already enacted a smoking ban.
The Texas Department of Health released a report in August 2003 stating beverage and restaurant sales for El Paso did not decline one year after a smoking ban was issued in the city.
A study done by New York City’s Department of Finance in 2004 showed an increase in restaurant and bar sales, as well as an increase in liquor licenses, despite a smoke ban enacted the previous year.
“The opponents of this ordinance have attempted to use fear tactics that are not based on factual data,” Ehlers said. “We have provided data in similar cities that shows when the policy we are proposing is instituted there is no economic damage to restaurants and bars – there is no reason to suspect Baytown would be different.”
Despite what studies show, Zoes was adamant about sales being affected at her restaurant.
“I don’t know where they get their statistics from,” she said. “They don’t pull the poll off of my register.”
Owners of Rooster’s Steakhouse, 6 W. Texas Ave., declared their restaurant smoke-free rather than setting aside a smoking section when the city first issued a smoking ordinance in 1999.
Rooster’s co-owner Freda Cox said she was unsure whether a smoke-free policy affected business because she noticed sales drop after 9/11 and after a train began to pass during lunchtime that prevented customers getting to the restaurant. However, Cox said she enjoys the clean air in her restaurant despite complaints from smokers.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said. “It’s healthier.”
But like her other colleagues, Cox said the decision to allow smoking should reside in the business owner’s hands.
“I understand what’s trying to be done, but I feel it’s the individual’s decision to decide what to do in their business,” she said. “If a person doesn’t want to be around smoke, then they shouldn’t go to a place that has smoking.”
Smoking bans currently exist in seven Texas cities, including Austin and El Paso, 11 states and nine countries.
The SmokeFree Baytown Coalition comprises 21 civic and public health organizations for educating Baytown residents on the dangers of secondhand smoke. Members include the San Jacinto Methodist Hospital, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Baytown Cardiology, the Bay Area Cancer Surgery Center and the Bay Area Ministerial Alliance.
The beauty of it is, in the Summer you can have Bar-B-Que's and Picnic Dinners out of doors...
In inclement weather, or winter, indoor gatherings, Haloween themed parties, or even Thanksgiving, Christmas themed gatherings..
And there's nothing wrong with Pot-Luck Dinners, where everyone contributes, bringing their best culinary treats..
Only problems with that is often 50% is desserts... LOL..
When I was (very) young, and growing up in North Dakota / Minnesota, it was customary to attend such gatherings, especially in the summer months, but even in winter..
Farming communities tend to get "cabin fever" from the isolation in winter and it practically Demands regular get togethers..
When they forced a smoking ban on the state of Maine, a lot of businesses closed and the ones that stayed open had to cut back staff and reduce hours. This BS about smoking bans not choking the economy is just not true!
When I was (very) young, and growing up in North Dakota / Minnesota, it was customary to attend such gatherings, especially in the summer months, but even in winter..
Farming communities tend to get "cabin fever" from the isolation in winter and it practically Demands regular get togethers..
One thing the Maine smoking ban did was bring friends and families back together IN their own homes!
Thanks for the additional ideas!!! Summers are especially nice what with picnic tables and umbrella's and music. Everyone sitting around talking and laughing. It's been good, actually. :)
Here is what an outdoor smoking deck looks like in a Maine winter. LOL
The general non-smoking public have been duped into thinking that if they vote to ban smoking they will be helping everyone, TO include the smoker, hoping they will quit.
When in all actuality, the smoking bans imposed upon a private business owner cuts revenue, therefore, he has to cut hours, lay off employees. Also, people do not realize that when one business cuts back, that also cuts back the vendors that supply that business.
The trickle down effect. It's all bad. Everyone suffers.
The lies today about second hand smoke is just that.....LIES.
When the war on the smokers didn't work the anti's then turned it around to say that OUR second hand smoke is KILLING everyone.
If anyone believes this, I have that bridge I will sell you. heh!
Last week the Boston Globe ran a story about city and business leaders in Provincetown trying to come up with new ways to attract tourists to Provincetown -- you know, bring the kids and see the q***rs, or something -- because business has plunged in a town that survives on bars and restaurants.
Now, the Globe, being antismoking to the core, never asked what impact the smoking ban has had on Provincetown but I can tell you:
The smoking ban had a bigger impact on Provincetown than a plague!!!
It was very hard for me to believe that Boston went smoke free as well as Cape Cod. We spent a lot of time on the Cape and I had to attend school a few times in Boston.
I often wondered how Boston and the Cape made it after the smoking ban. I know P Town is all gay territory.
And it's pathetic when the media doesn't report BOTH sides of the smoking ban. If nothing is printed about the downside, then everyone believes all is ok. Well, all is NOT ok!
The Surf Club, The Governor Bradford, The Crown and Anchor. The Gifford House with four or five bars on different levels, all with different clientels. Commercial Street on a weekend night. The Blessing of the Fleet.
It started to change when the cops in all the small towns between P-Town and Hyannis decided to aid their bottom line by making it tough to drive home with only one or two drinks under your belt.
A pox on the Bluenoses and modern day Puritans.
Maybe we can go up in the attic like Anne Frank.
There are a lot of reasons that businesses close their doors and I don't believe that you can specifically attribute any of them to a ban on smoking. Sometimes businesses close because they are badly managed. Others because trends change and something new opened down the street that sucked their customers away. The fact remains that smokers still eat, whether they can smoke or not.
Lots of businesses closed as the result of the recent downturn in the economy. Too many people out of work, not enough income. Doesn't mean that a ban on smoking was the cause.
I know I won't change your mind, you already have convinced yourself that the smoking ban is the cause of it all. There is way too much evidence to prove that the smoking ban has had no harmful effect on business operations. Smokers can still smoke, they just can't do it inside a restaurant, anymore. In the long run, they are too small a minority to have asignificant effect on most businesses.
Go ask a hay grower in southern Delaware. He sells his product to the horseman that races at Dover Downs, where purses plunged after the smoking ban at the casinos that funded horse-race purses.
Go ask the John Deere guy who hasn't sold him a baler since then. Ask the guy who runs the diner where the John Deere guy used eat. Ask the restaurant-supply guy who hasn't sold a stove to the diner since.
Etc. ... consider the obvious, logical repercussions of your smoking bans. It doesn't just shut down bars, although there is a long list here in New York City.
I have a friend who owns a fairly popular restaurant in a nice part of the DFW area. They banned smoking and lost all of 1 customer in the first year and a half. He said business was better over the previous year or so.
Losing customers in actual restaurants to smoking bans is a myth. It may apply to certain bars in certain areas of town, but its in small numbers.
I'm not hysterical and I resent your implication.
I suppose you didn't bother to read the links I have provided then. I guess none of them mean anything to you.
If you read them, you might have some doubt in your mind that I just might be right. And you sure don't want that, do you?
The bubble boy doesn't want to read just some of the links provided how the smoking bans have hurt and/or killed off a business. It just might provoke his brain to a new mind set.
And the anti's sure don't want that, do they!
Thanks for the ping!
I see. 25-30 % of the population is 'too small a minority' to have any effect. That's a joke in itself, but I'll pass on that one for now. What you seem to not understand is, many restaurants and virtually all bars have their business comprised of 75-90% smokers. You continue to believe the horseshit that's spewed forth by the rabid smoker-hating Nazi scum, I'll choose to believe my own eyes, thanks. I knew several of those former business owners personally. Your business does NOT become virtually non-existent overnight after being around 20-40 years without outside interference. And they all knew what it was in this case. The voters had to wait a year for it to be on the ballot (thanks to a screw job by the city the first time it was tried), and some of them just couldn't hold on. Enjoy your envisioned utopia where everyone is as perfect as you.
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