Posted on 09/04/2002 9:51:19 PM PDT by lewislynn
They have become as familiar as lawn ornaments around the Golden State, huddled in front of their favorite watering holes in all kinds of weather, pulling on their cigarettes, jawing about the world's problems.
It has been nearly five years since smokers became officially unwelcome in California's bars, to anguished cries from many tavern owners and patrons. Now the Big Apple, of all places, is looking to ban butts, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan is causing a furor.
Memo to New Yorkers having a nicotine fit:
Life goes on.
"It was a tough thing," admitted Marge Kendrick, a longtime smoker and bartender at the Zebra Club in midtown Sacramento, where a cocktail and a smoke once went together like peanut butter and jelly. "People resisted it at first. But not anymore. They realize that this is the way things are going to be. Now they just get up and go outside."
When the ban, the nation's first statewide law prohibiting smoking in bars, took effect in January 1998, many dedicated smokers and tavern owners predicted doom. Bars would close, restaurant revenues would plummet, tourism and barroom camaraderie would suffer, they argued.
"It was a nightmare in the beginning," said Robert Berger, supervising environmental health specialist for Sacramento County, whose department is in charge of enforcing the ban in unincorporated areas. "We had lots and lots of violations. Lots of angry phone calls. Now it's rare. I can't remember the last time I had a complaint."
The economic impact of the ban has been widely debated. While some individual tavern owners claim business has dropped as much as 30 percent since the ban took effect, overall revenue for California bars and restaurants has grown every year since the law's enactment, according to figures from the State Board of Equalization. A spokeswoman for the California Restaurant Association said the ban has had no negative impact on the dining business, and in fact may be encouraging more families to go out more often. California remains the top draw in the country for tourism.
Meanwhile, surveys have shown that more than 80 percent of the state's residents prefer an environment free of cigarette smoke, and a University of California, San Francisco, study published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association found that smoking bans in taverns improve the health of bartenders.
Still, the ban, designed as a labor law to protect employees from secondhand smoke, has its detractors. Smokers' rights groups still decry the government's intervention into personal habits. Liquor trade associations have registered their opposition to the New York plan, as they did to California's.
But day to day, in taverns, pool halls and restaurants once clouded with tobacco smoke, even those most resistant to the ban have found ways to cope.
Outside the front door at Perkins Station, a haven for pool and dart players in the College Greens area, smokers amiably gather near a white plastic bucket that collects ashes and butts. Socal's, a venerable haunt in east Sacramento, offers a tiny enclosed "smoking porch" off the bar. Owner Bill Farrell said he spent about $13,000 to construct the porch as a matter of economic survival.
"I had to do it," Farrell said. "That first year was devastating. I never allowed smoking from Day One. I have some really special customers who are smokers, and telling them to stand outside in the rain was just unacceptable."
The smoking porch has proved immensely popular.
"It gets pretty crowded. Sometimes it just looks like a big can of sardines in there," said bartender Susan Terry.
After a rough couple of years, Farrell said, Socal's is hopping again.
"Really, I think the businesses that were hurt most by the smoking ban were the dry cleaners," he joked.
For some customers, shuffling out the door with their fellow pariahs has become something of a bonding experience.
"Someone will ask, 'Anybody ready for a smoke?' and we'll just go," said Kerry Johnson, sitting on a stool at the Zebra Club, a pack of Camels parked in front of him.
"It's kind of nice, actually," added smoker Susan Schatz.
A few bar owners have found creative ways to get around the law, which applies only to taverns that have employees.
"All of a sudden, some of these places have no employees. They have 10 owners," said Anne Frey, Sacramento County's senior environmental health specialist and an enforcer of the smoking ban. Such arrangements have been legally challenged, she noted.
A small number of bar owners have simply opted to allow their patrons to light up, risking hefty fines. First offenses cost bar owners $281, and fines double and triple with repeat violations.
"My customers hate the law. I hate it," said one proprietor, declining to give her name. "Drinking and smoking go together for a lot of people, and now they have nowhere to go."
Business at her bar has dropped 20 percent to 30 percent since the ban, she estimated. So if customers insist on smoking, she allows them to do so for fear of losing them. Her bar has never been fined by the "smoke police," she said, but she is willing to take the chance.
After rabid resistance at first, officials now estimate that about 90 percent of businesses in the Sacramento area are complying with the smoking law. In the county, things are so good that enforcers have temporarily stopped conducting random "sweeps" for violators.
"Our jobs were fairly dangerous for a while," said Frey. "We felt physically threatened in some cases. Verbally, we were being abused terribly. That's not happening anymore.
"We still have a few stubborn cowboys out there, but in the past year compliance has been absolutely great. People have adjusted."
Besides California, Delaware, Utah, Vermont and South Dakota all have statewide laws prohibiting smoking in workplaces, including restaurants. Dozens of American cities have banned smoking in certain indoor areas.
Now comes Bloomberg's proposal, which has triggered widespread outrage in New York and effectively ended the mayor's political honeymoon.
Bloomberg, who has said he quit smoking 18 years ago, wants the City Council to widen cigarette smoking restrictions to outlaw lighting up in all bars and restaurants. Like California's law, his proposal is billed as a health initiative, and has its vocal supporters.
But it is proving hugely controversial, with many New Yorkers calling the plan sneaky, uncool and outrageous, among other things, and vowing defiance. Washington Post columnist Art Buchwald has even weighed in, warning that the measure could "change the mating habits of the singles class as we know it."
In recent weeks, proponents of the New York plan have been consulting with Californians who were instrumental in passage of the Golden State's law.
Dian Kiser, spokeswoman for BREATH, the California Smokefree Bars, Workplaces and Communities Program, said she has armed Bloomberg's people with plenty of information, statistics and advice.
"In California, we can hardly remember what it was like to not have a smoke-free workplace," she said.
"Mayor Bloomberg is giving the people of New York the greatest gift imaginable."
Some residents of the Big Apple clearly disagree.
"Nobody has bothered to ask us what we think," said Ciaran Hegarty as he mixed cocktails at Langan's in Times Square. "This is America. It's a democracy, isn't it?"
Hegarty said he believes Bloomberg's plan is a scheme to make money on the backs of smokers.
"This is prohibition, and New Yorkers won't stand for it," he continued. "Drinking and smoking and talking, that's what it's all about in a bar. That will continue no matter what."
The Bee's Cynthia Hubert can be reached at (916)321-1082 or chubert@sacbee.com.
THERE it is! Thank you Madame Dufarge!!! I bookmarked it to make sure I can find it again! Thanks so much!
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute of Religious Freedom, 1779
Can anyone tell me why I'm forced to pay for NPR and PBS?
Because people like you keep supporting the increase in government power beyond its constitutional authority. And since nothing is totally safe and hazard free, and thus most idiot Americans support intervention in private property and affairs, even where say 1 person in hundreds of millions might be injured, therefor, there is no limit to government as a general rule. You object to NPR, and rightly so, but fail to see NPR as but a small part in a larger problem.
Mark my words. I see nothing that will officially stop the health nazis from ruling high fat foods illegal. I could even see President Bush supporting some initial legislation. There is no reason food can't be made tasty and lowfat, it is only the greed of the merchants and the ignorance of the great unwashed victims. I can see the ads, of men showing their bypass scars on tv, and saying McDonalds did this too me. Or a widow and children who are asking, "Where's dady, Mommy?" BurgerKing killed him children.
You wait.
Regardless of smoking/non-smoking debate. WE HAVE GOVERNMENT PUSHING BILLS TO OTHER BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT SO THAT YET OTHER BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT CAN INCREASE YET MORE GOVERNMENT?
Is it me or is there some sort of critical mass starting to build up here? What ever happened to the people. Oh, I forgot, they are sitting in front of the tube, waiting for a government check, unless they are working for the governmet, or just plain old working, in which case they are too exhausted to protest (how convient).
This is the same Kevin W. Concannon whose department was "protecting" Logan Marr to death:
Six weeks before she was killed, Logan was on a visit to her birth mother when, in the presence of a child-welfare worker hired to supervise the visit, she complained that her foster mother was hurting her. "She did this to me and I cried 'cause it hurts me," the child is heard saying on a videotape, although she isn't seen. Despite this information, there was no immediate investigation and Logan's child-welfare worker failed to make a required quarterly visit to the foster home.
"In Maine, they don't even try to visit children more than once every three months," Wexler told ABCNEWS. "And they weren't even doing that until the scandal surrounding the Logan Marr case."
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