Texas: Smoking ban takes center stage at council meeting

Strict new smoking ordinances - including one that would ban lighting up in all public spaces, such as restaurants - will be considered by the Beaumont City Council at its meeting Tuesday.

City Manager Kyle Hayes will present council members with two smoking ban drafts. One of those would apply to bars, restaurants, workplaces, bowling alleys and most other enclosed spaces accessible to the public.

The other would exempt bars - defined as establishments which derive at least 70 percent of revenue from alcohol sales. This proposal also would allow smoking in restaurants if there is a walled-off smoking area with a separate ventilation system.

The proposals are just a starting point, Hayes said.

No vote will be taken, but city officials will begin meeting with restaurant and bar owners as well as advocates of a total ban to get feedback on the proposals.

"There are so many variables to the ordinance, I thought (council members) would want choices," Hayes said.

The issue came to the forefront last year when the Jefferson County Medical Society endorsed a total ban and urged the council to act.

Second-hand smoke kills 50,000 Americans each year, the group said.

Beaumont's city attorney and public health director studied smoking ordinances in other Texas cities before drafting the proposals to be presented Tuesday, Hayes said.

El Paso and Austin have banned smoking in nearly all public spaces. An analysis by the state health department shows at least 29 Texas cities have adopted a ban that is at least modestly strict.

Some apply only to restaurants but not to bars or bars in restaurants. Others allow smoking only in stand-alone bars, and some allow smoking as long as there is a designated area with separate ventilation or an air purification system.

In El Paso, many restaurant and bar owners said the 2002 ban was a devastating hit. Sales plummeted and many went out of businesses - some said they survived only by building an outdoor patio for smokers.

But city officials there pointed out that sales tax revenue from restaurants and bars remained stable after the ban was implemented.

After the Nazis and the Japanese, it was the Soviet Union, dear lady. I'm sitting about halfway between two of the largest remaining missile silo complexes right now. Ringside seat for WWIII.

Maybe Nikita was right. We grow more repressive every day, and all "for our own good".

Molly was just on Fox News saying that our government found a tunnel that ended up in a MOSQUE in the US!!!!

I know this isn't the thread for this, but since you brought it up!!

And then when the business owner goes to the expense of a separate area they will ban it everywhere,as they did in Massachusetts.

And as they did in my town:

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.

It is a good point, nonetheless, and perhaps this as good a place as any.

Maybe, just maybe, people will wake up and realize that we again face such a threat.

But as long as the MSM keeps people fighting over how many angels will be allowed to dance on the head of a pin and which steps are allowed, playing pep-rally partisan games, and distracting them from the very real developing situation, the crows will be fighting over the carcass in the end.

OK I am a DJ in a bar in beaumont and i smoke. If the total ban came into play we would shut down as about 70% of our clients smoke. We are privately owned and as such have the right to refuse entry to anyone on any basis except colour. So if we banned non-smokers would we be able to smoke.

These idiots on the council forget how much we pay them in various taxes and annual fees. Now they are proposing the new waterfront development, which bars and corps are going to move into town when the existing bars are shutting due to people not going out to them anymore?

Fiscally any club owner who operates a no smoking policy voluntarily will loose business. Smokers do make up a large percentage of the clubbing/drinking crowd, even if it was 15 or 20 percent no owner is going to risk loosing that percentage of prospective clients from the offset, non smokers are more likely to go to smoking bars than smokers going to a non smoking place, after all it is an addiction and if they are gagging for a smoke they will not stay or be happy, and club owners like happy people as they buy more drinks before leaving. Restaurants are different as smoking while people are eating is just nasty, and i smoke, but if i was going out tonight and had to choose i would not go to a non smoking bar, heck i do not drink anymore so what fun would that be.

I think maybe these days people have forgotten to live and let live, some seem to think they have a right to impose their belief structures and creeds on others and ignore the fact that the others have rights too. Some people do things that are disagreeable to me, but it is their lives/bodies/etc and i have no right to tell them not to do something, i may tell them i do not agree and have a lively debate but at the end of the day they have the right to choose as i have the right to move away/switch channel/ turn off

i looked at the figures you mentioned and i will try and did up the email i wrote about deaths in the US, but auto accidents is pretty much the top of the list. Also the smoking related deaths never mentioned what percentage were non-smokers, what they actually died from, and if smoking was the main cause. If anyone has actually been to beaumont the air quality here is terrible with all the chemical plants spewing junk into the air, in my opinion smoking here is better for you than breathing the air, after all we do lead the world in cancer deaths (yay go Beaumont)

At the end of the day it is a personal choice, i choose to smoke and am aware of the risks, and why should the minority of people who go out at night tell me that i cannot enjoy a smoke with my martini (which in itself is not good for you)

cheers

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