I'm not worried about it. Besides, I roll my own.
Posted on 06/26/2006 8:19:38 PM PDT by SheLion
While some say the introduction of the statewide smoking ban next Saturday will level the playing field, a group of restaurants and bar owners are fuming over what they say are unfair exemptions.
Smokers who travel to Colorado’s casinos and Denver International Airport will be able to light up.
Puffing on a Basic Ultra Light last week over a game of bingo at Loveland Elks Lodge 1051, Frank Bustos said the law is unfair.
“They shouldn’t hold the bar and pool hall owners back,” said Bustos, who has been a smoker for 53 of his 65 years. “Bars are traditionally a smoking place. People know that.”
Businesses should be allowed to have smoking rooms, he said, and employees can choose whether they want to work in them.
That’s exactly the atmosphere Chauncey Taylor has created at Johnson’s Corner on Interstate 25.
In the past two years, Taylor has invested more than $7 million renovating the 50-year-old truck stop and restaurant, largely to comply with highway access regulations.
The renovation included building a separate glassed-in smoking room with its own heating and ventilation system. That alone set him back $50,000.
Taylor, a nonsmoker himself, said the DIA exemption aimed at travelers was inconsistent.
“Truck stops are inherently a travel oasis. So why not truck stops?”
More than 50 percent of Johnson’s Corner’s clientele are travelers, he said.
“Truckers have told me that they’ll just drive on through to Wyoming.” he said.
Harrell Cross owns the Top Hat Lounge in downtown Loveland. A horseshoe-shaped bar near the door serves as the bar’s gathering place. Weekday happy hours — 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. — are the busiest times of the day.
A jukebox hugs a wall across from the bar. A pool table stands in the back. A handful of tables are scattered throughout. A small stage hosts bands on weekend nights.
While the live music on the weekends may draw a crowd of a hundred or so, those nights are hit-and-miss, Cross said.
“Sometimes you make a buck, sometimes you lose a buck.”
It is the regulars who come in every day that keep the place alive.
And 95 percent of them smoke.
While a menu board offers a slim array of eats — hot dogs, corn dogs, hamburgers, frozen pizza — most of the Top Hat’s regular clientele — 40 to 50 average working Joes — stop by on their way home for a drink, a smoke and to shoot a little bull and maybe some pool.
“What smokers want to be able to do is sit at the bar and talk. It’s a social environment. They want to be able to play pool and hear the jukebox. Even having a patio, you can’t achieve those goals,” he said.
While restaurant owners might be able to make up the lost bar business in food sales, less than 1 percent of The Top Hat’s income comes from food, Cross said.
An injunction filed to stop the ban from taking effect failed Friday when a federal judge said a coalition of bar owners and others failed to prove their position.
Jim Von Feldt, owner of Billy’s Inn in Denver and founder and president of the coalition, said the money he will lose because of the ban will push him over the edge.
He’s selling out.
While some studies show that large-scale bans do not have long-reaching effects on bar business, his statistics show that smoking bans in New York and Florida have slashed bar revenues as much as 75 percent, he said.
“Nobody can sit there and tell me this is not going to affect business.”
You folks still don't get it. The smoking bans will be nationwide in a few years and all businesses will be on same playing field.
Smoker's strategies to stop this have failed miserably. I have tried to explain why but they don't care to listen.
The smoker then warns about fatty foods being next on the chopping block. They are again in denial. The next thing will be smoking bans in private homes using child abuse as the reason.
Their current strategy will also fail on this and as they have done on public smoking bans, they will be in denial about this second coming wave.
It really is sad and frustrating to watch.
WE don't GET IT? How about YOU reading some of the posting to YOU on so many threads. YOU still don't get it!!!!
It really is sad and frustrating to watch.
Do you really want to know what is sad and frustrating to watch? How you continually post to the smoking threads here in FRee Republic and to further read how many people in here can't stand you. Yet you are like some horse with blinders. You don't even have a clue Ray!
HELLO!!!! KNOCK KNOCK! ANYONE IN THERE?????!!!!!!
Heck, repeal all that anti-gun crap back to and including the NFA of '34!
Suits me just fine.
Ray, give me the money from ANYWHERE, tobacco companies, freedom fighters, where ever, that the anti-smokers get from the government and EVERYONE will get it.
It's not about health, it's about personal preference. And the Anti-smokers have used junk science, lies, inuendo, and MONEY to make it SEEM about health.
Give me the money and I'll refute all their junk science, lies, and inuendos nationwide.
What's that you say? The tobacco companies are forbidden BY LAW to give me any money?
What's that you say? The normal person who cares about freedoms and liberties can't afford to give the same amount the government can afford?
We see what's happening. We just don't have the bankroll to get it in front of everyone.
And when they come for something you like........I will STILL laugh my head off.
Add to your list, Christian music. They are now using the moral police's tools against all Christians.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1653301/posts
MG's are legal in something like 34 states, so long as they are properly registered with the federal government.
Don't YOU look forward to the day when you have to register your cigs with the government in order to smoke? (yep, that's SARC. )
I'm not worried about it. Besides, I roll my own.
I hate to say it, but I am no longer surprised by this.
These people are really a bunch of insecure losers.
Sickening, yes. The anti-smoking nazis started before the litigation was ever a viable vehicle for going after 'Big Tobacco'. It only took one Liberal Federal Judge in Florida to remove every affirmative defense of the cigarette companies to ensure a plaintiff victory which then basically opened the floodgates which then eventually included Congress (the biggest trial lawyers of them all).
Here in Massachusetts a state rep called Jarret Barrios (He has a HUSBAND called Doug) wants Fluffernutters out of the schools.
It's becoming a dark comedy.
I read that thread.
There was a time when this would have been unbelievable.
These people are certifiably insane.
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