CO: Ban Damage: CO And now, the roofs begin tumbling down

The issue is no longer just about smoking.

Passing a state law outlawing smoking in most public places was, by this comparison, the easiest thing to do.

The law was not required to address the inevitable hardships such a bill was destined to inflict.

There was clapping and backslapping on the floor of the state Senate the afternoon it passed there. But none of that really matters now, when the issue is one of how it impacts people's lives.

They are men and women who once ran tiny, yet prosperous, packed-to- the-kegs establishments, who now tend mostly empty bars. The looks on their faces would be no different had their roofs actually fallen in.

They call me. What am I supposed to do, I ask? Write about it, they respond.

What has happened is a statewide tragedy, sponsored by the government. And where are all of the people, they all want to know, that the government promised would flock to their now-smoke-free bars?

The loudest of them, of course, has been Jim VonFeldt, owner of the venerable Billy's Inn at 44th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard.

In the weeks between the governor's signing of the bill and July 1, when the law went into effect, he rallied a relatively small band of tavern owners to challenge the law in court.

A judge denied their sought-after injunction. The litigation itself remains pending in the courts.

Jim VonFeldt has just returned to Billy's from his banker when he calls me, yet again.

He has owned the place for 21 years; his wife's family owned it for nearly 20 years before that. His two grown children are his only employees.

And now, he wants to talk.

It is just after 1 p.m. when I walk into the joint. The only sound emanates from a television in the corner, droning a detective show. Only bearded, vacant-eyed Jay, who has occupied the same far-corner barstool for decades, inhabits the place.

Jim VonFeldt walks up from the back, carrying a large stack of documents. He begins reading from them.

Total business is off 35.14 percent since July 1, he begins. Liquor sales, jukebox, cigarette, vending and Lotto scratch-off machine receipts have declined in 23 short days by at least half.

"That video golf game used to average $75 to $100 a week. The last two weeks, the vendor and I split the 6 bucks that were in it," Jim VonFeldt says.

"Where are all these people the government told me would make my life better? My most loyal customers come, but maybe they have a drink. Most have just stopped coming altogether."

As leader of the Coalition for Equal Rights, the tavern owners' group, he gets calls every day, he says. Three come in as we chat, including one from the lawyer representing the group.

"This is simply crippling," he moans into the phone to the lawyer. Hanging up, he beseeches me to look at the blue folder in front of him. It is filled with his complete financial records, the same ones he has just handed his banker at Chase to leverage his house to the hilt in order to pay his bills. I decline.

So he hands me his state workers compensation bill.

"I don't have the money. All of my cash flow has been depleted," Jim VonFeldt said. "And if I don't have workers comp, I can be fined up to $17,000. I don't know what I am going to do."

To emphasize his point, he walks me to the automatic teller machine I had used a month before.

A large "out of order" sign now lies across the keyboard.

"I don't have enough $20 bills to put in it," he says.

He reads from a stack of notes taken during myriad recent conversations with Coalition members, of patrons saying they are going outside for a smoke but never come back, of fights the bartenders inside can no longer break up, of thieves cleaning out cash registers when bartenders themselves sneak out for a drag or two.

Many owners, Jim VonFeldt says, are doing what he did two days ago: writing Bill Owens and begging for an exemption to the law.

"The ban has decimated my business," his letter to the governor begins. "I am one or two weeks away from bankruptcy.

"If I lose this, so goes my whole family. Please grant this exemption for my family."

The last sentence he has typed in large bold letters.

While he waits to hear back from the governor, he fumes.

"We've got young men now fighting all over the world for what they tell us is for democracy and freedom," Jim VonFeldt, 60, said.

"Yet our own government is taking away my freedom to operate my business right here at home. It's just not right."

He sighs.

"At a time when I should be planning for retirement and the good things in life, the only thing I'm planning is how to survive. If I fail - and this worries me the most - I fail my children.

"I don't know what I am going to do."

These guys? I never heard what they had to say before you mentioned them

Here is an extract

Tobacco researchers talk about the gap between what we know and what we do. What we know is that most smokers want to quit, most see a doctor at least once a year, and most doctors want to help them quit. Moreover, we know that the nation could double its current national annual rate of quitting if doctors routinely offered brief advice, counseling, and effective pharmacotherapy (such as the nicotine patch or Zyban) that the Guideline recommends. Unfortunately, only 50–60 percent of smokers report getting any advice on quitting from their physicians, and fewer than 25 percent report any further counseling or drug-based therapy. Low-income and minority smokers are the least likely to get this help.

Granted, the gap between what we know and what we do has grown smaller. The number of quitters who currently make use of effective treatments is somewhere between 20 and 30 percent, which is twice as high as it was a decade ago.⁶ There are plenty of reasons to explain why this gap has not shrunk further:

Doctors and other primary care practitioners are not trained
to deliver tobacco-cessation therapies. For example, fewer than
20 percent of medical schools offer even three hours of clinical instruction in treating tobacco addiction.⁷
Physicians underestimate the difficulty smokers face in overcoming tobacco addiction and feel discouraged by what they perceive as their own lack of success in helping them. Even those who qualify (by helping their patients quit) for what Fiore calls “the good doctor club” note that if they succeed in getting one in five of their smoking patients to stop—a major public health achievement—results are typically delayed and invisible.
The health care system does not support tobacco-cessation efforts. Surveys funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation show that physicians who work to put the clinical practice Guideline into action do so without reminder and follow-up systems, without access to self-help materials, telephone quit lines, or community programs required to deliver effective counseling outside the eighteen-minute clinical visit.
Insurance coverage and reimbursement policies often do not cover tobacco-dependence treatment that is known to be effective. Medicare, for example, still provides no coverage, and in 2000 only thirty-three states provided Medicaid coverage for any of the proven treatments recommended by the Guideline.
The business case for tobacco-dependence treatment has not been made. Most purchasers of health care (such as large corporations), most policy makers, and most benefit consultants are not aware of the actual costs of illness related to smoking or of the economic benefits of quitting.⁸ Businesses are unenthusiastic about anything but an immediate return on investment. “Health plans are fighting for their financial lives right now, and many of them claim that since member turnover is so high, they won’t realize the savings three or four years down the road for money they’re spending today,” says Barbara Lardy, director of medical affairs for the American Association of Health Plans, managed care’s national trade organization.
The community treating tobacco dependence does not think along policy lines. During a time when prevention policies were driving down the number of young people who took up smoking, few advocates focused on the power of these policies to induce smokers to quit. Similarly, until recently, policy makers and policy researchers largely ignored policy and regulatory strategies for tobacco cessation.
Even though most smokers want to quit and try to do so, this desire has not translated into demand for treatment. In a focus group funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, officials from health plans offering the most generous smoking-cessation treatments and benefits voiced a common frustration over smokers’ generally low use of these services.⁹ Not that there has been much done to build demand. Aside from recent direct-to-consumer advertising for nicotine gum and patches and Zyban, there have been few efforts to educate smokers about effective treatment. Aids and programs to reduce tobacco dependence are far less available to smokers than are cigarettes.
http://www.rwjf.org/files/publications/books/2003/chapter_06.html

Your agenda is one of a petty little dictator, or a socialist. Let's try using your logic with other issues.

Drivers don't buckle seat belts. They haven't done that so now it's being done for them.

Parents should teach their kids what we believe. They haven't done that so now it's being done for them.

Gun owners should use their weapons safely. They haven't done that so now it's being done for them.

Parents should feed their children healthy food. They haven't done that so now it's being done for them.

Drivers haven't been conserving gas. They haven't done that so now it's being done for them.

And on and on it goes. Dictatorial elitists want everyone to be forced to submit to the approved behavior. If they refuse to acquiesce to threats, the dictator will use the force of government. Oh, and your comment about respecting the person and property is laughable. Where is the business owner's right to his property. You remind of the liberals crying about freedom of speech. They want it for themselves, but not for anyone else.

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