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.
Click on The Facts to see the actual impact of smoking bans to private businesses.
Oak Ridge Labs, TN & SECOND HAND SMOKE
Statistics and Data Sciences Group Projects
I think any anti who tries to dismiss the findings of the U.S. Department of Energy labs at Oak Ridge, should be confronted with the question: "Are you saying that DOE researchers committed scientific fraud and that their findings on ETS exposure are untrue?"
But what about all those people who had heart attacks from SHS /sarc
LAKEWOOD -- To see how well the smoking ban here is working out, join Tracy Willows at the end of her shift, when she is shaking her head at the 20 bucks -- if she's lucky -- in her pocket and wondering if her pay will be enough to fill her gas tank, much less put food on the table or buy gym uniforms for her two kids.
"I can't even pay my rent. My parents have been making my car payments for me, but they can't do that anymore," she said this week from a booth at the Grand Central Casino, where she is a waitress.
Smoking bans could snuff out small bars, eateries
DC
Attention all business owners suffering from a smoking ban.
Please fill out this form and submit it for a new web page
Ban Loss
How's business since smoke has cleared? (Dallas smoking ban - restaurant sales est. down 25%)
But business owners say fresher air has come at a high cost. And while the numbers to conclusively prove it are not yet in, some have reported losses, while others have closed their doors for good.
In Kerrville, TX, they are mulling a smoking ban in all public places:
http://www.dailytimes.com/story.lasso?wcd=18940
Are the control freaks willing to put up their own money to fund the shortfall to businesses when it happens?
Maybe overofficious goverment fascists would prefer restaurants and bars to set up hyperbaric oxygen chambers?
If the governemnt want to be technical, let THEM be liable for every sickness and death resulting from alcohol -- afterall it's proven "dangerous" to one's health, isn't it?
This hysteria has been going on for years. Back in the early/mid-90s, the smoking ban hit restaurants in the FDW area. Same hysteria - restaurants will be forced to close, customers will stay home, blah, blah, blah.
Didn't happen. Business went on and got better because many customers who previously wouldn't go to restaurants to eat because of their pro-smoking stance could now go out and enjoy a meal without the stench of cigarettes.
This is just knee-jerk panic by smokers and Chicken Littles. As usual, there is (literally) neither smoke, nor fire. And, every other place that has banned publis smoking has not seen a decrease in business. This is all much ado about nothing.
FDW = DFW
Silly keyboard, typos are for kids!!
Austin (of all places) did. And ended up watering down the anti-smoking laws.
It should be up to the individual business owners. That's part of what "free enterprise" means.
Heck NO!
My favorite place to eat almost closed their doors after the first smoking ban in Maine in 2000.
The owner then invested in a very expensive liquor license and business started to boom again.
They then remodeled. The place is beautiful. 4 big ceiling air purifiers. Full menu. A beautiful glass enclosed non-smoking section. Sign on the entrance door "This is a smoking establishment. No one under 18 admitted without guardian."
It is a Sports Bar with the full computer golf game across the back wall; bunch of big TV's. Just beautiful.
But that still wasn't good enough for the state. A full no smoking ban went into effect a year ago January. I went once after the ban, was so miserable that I couldn't sit there like old times and enjoy the evening that I haven't put myself through that again.
And do you think the state will reimburse this business owner for spending his own money to be able to accommodate everyone? You can bet they will not.
To all you smokers who can still go into town or the city and go into a restaurant and/or bar or tavern.....order your meal and beverage and smoke, you better treasure every day that you can.
Maine went totally smoke free in 2003. That was my recreation: going out for meals a few times a month. It was wonderful. I didn't know how wonderful it was until we smokers in Maine lost that right.
So, take it from me! Enjoy the places that can continue to accommodate you and the ones who still have smoking sections!
That's a terrible story. What a hatred of free will they show!
I've lived in Baytown & it's full of chemical plants. One can drive only a mile & get 10 different chemical smells. Sometimes they are bad enough to burn your eyes. If anyone thinks that banning smokers will improve the air quality at all, they are either just plain stupid or extremely biased.
I don't know what planet you are living on, but it sure isn't ours! You better start paying more attention.
The REAL Results of Smoking Bans
Please print out the
Ban Loss Database
(Money and business lost due to bans)
and the
Ban Damage Page
(Deaths, Injuries, Rape, and more)
Bring them to your politicians. Tell them ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! This failed experiment in human behavior is killing people and it has to stop now. Death certificates from "smoking" are zero, while death certificates from smoking bans and making a legal product un-politically correct are rising.
Antismoking Lobbyists parade vague studies, filled with vague statistics, based upon vaguely designed business criteria, and make vague claims that after three years or so of vague losses, “businesses will recover and bounce back to almost pre-ban levels” as ravening thirsty hordes of nonsmokers currently cowering in their homes transform into wild party animals. Of course this vague assertion only holds true if we pretend that general economic inflation does not exist, but that’s no more fanciful than the rest of the Antismoking Lobby’s assertions.
We on the other hand simply present close to 500 on the record REAL examples of REAL businesses and REAL people negatively affected in a REAL way by smoking bans. No statistics. No numbers juggling. No “private data” that can’t be examined by the public. Just reality. If your town is heading toward a smoking ban, read these pages and weep.
Or else… stand up and do something about it: Antismokers say bans are “inevitable,” in the Borg’s Star Trek fashion of telling you that “Resistance is futile.” Resistance is not futile! Bar and restaurant owners can work together to fight for the right to run their private businesses free from interference by social engineers seeking to “Denormalize” smokers by forcing them from public view. These bans can be, and in many cases HAVE BEEN stopped.
Stand up and fight for your rights.
Just the news about:
Another Ban Failed
Ban Damage Articles
Smoking Ban Links from Dave Hitt
Economic Losses Due To Smoking Bans. By David W. Kuneman and Michael J. McFadden. Claims studies can only find smoking bans are bad for business when funded by Big Tobacco or its affiliates, or use anecdotal data are not true. We have shown smoking bans hurt bar and restaurant businesses 80% of the time using data from the U.S. Dept of Commerce.
Please send your ban loss information to info@smokersclub.com
AMEN!
I've lived in Baytown & it's full of chemical plants. One can drive only a mile & get 10 different chemical smells. Sometimes they are bad enough to burn your eyes. If anyone thinks that banning smokers will improve the air quality at all, they are either just plain stupid or extremely biased.
Sounds like the town "I" live in! We have a starch factory and it stinks to high heaven in the summer. But the state has forced a smoking ban on restaurants and bars. LOL
Start a smoker's dining group...
Get a few fellow smokers together and have dinners at your homes..
Take turns entertaining a couple times each year, and smoke 'em if you got 'em..
That's the ticket!
And yes, we do!!! We order take-out or delivery at our homes. :)
Tell that $hit to the more than 25 restarants and bars that closed their doors in Toledo. I know it happened, because I live here. Some of them had been around for 30 years or more. Nobody knows about it because the damned media refuse to report it. Oh-one bowling alley, too. Had been there for 40 years. The citizens voted to modify it-bars, bingo halls, private clbs, bowling alleys, and restaurants with ten or less employees are now exempt-as are any businesses who choose to install ventilation for a seperately enclosed smokers area. The usual suspects (ACS,AHA,ALA) were pissed about it-so now the same people are going for a statewide ban.
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