[Cboldt]

A national or regional ban is needed to keep the customers from drifting to smoking bars.

That is inconsitent with the assertion that a ban is not harmful to business. I thought you were saying that any "drifting off" of smokers is likely to be more than offset by increases in attendance by folks (smokers and non smokers alike) who prefer the non-smoking environment.

[VRWC_minion]

Let me start over again. There are two categories of smokers, the majority smoker and the minority smoker. The majority is the smoker that would prefer to go to a smoking place but if he has no other choices he will opt to go to nonsmoking place. The other smoker is the hard core smoker who cannot or will not frequent a place he may not smoke in no matter what.

If the majority smoker has the option available to go to a smoking place, then the nonsmoking bar will loose his revenues. If there is a ban on all places so that the smoker has no other options than the majority smoker will go to his ussual places.

The minority smoker will never go and will represent lost revenues. If lost revenues were the only effect from the smoking ban then all businesses would have less profits. However, costs are more than likely to be reduced if their is no need to cater to smokers. These reduces costs will offset the lost revenues from the hard core smoker. The exact numbers are unknown but my guess is that the net effect is a wash.