Industry should clear the air, reconsider its opposition to smoking-ban legislation

Nation's Restaurant News,  Oct 15, 2007  by Paul McIntyre

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More than half of the nation's restaurants and bars are now smoke-free by law, and as many as 70 percent are estimated to be that way by year's end. With this movement apparently unstoppable, it is time to re-examine the hospitality industry's long-held opposition to smoking bans and address the issue from a fresh prospective.

Until last November, no statewide smoking ban had ever been passed when its state restaurant association opposed the legislation. Then, last November, a smoking ban on Ohio's ballot passed convincingly, despite exhaustive efforts by the Ohio Restaurant Association and the tobacco industry to defeat it. A few months later Maryland passed a comprehensive statewide smoking ban, despite the Restaurant Association of Maryland's vigorous opposition.

This is not to suggest restaurateurs simply walk away from the table and surrender, but rather that they acknowledge the tide has definitely turned. These laws are passing whether restaurants and bars want them to or not. The best course of action is to become actively involved in the legislative process so that all businesses in the industry are treated equally, and implementation and enforcement is reasonable.

Operators should also abandon the outdated arguments and no-longer defensible positions used in previous attempts to stop the bans.

For years the tobacco industry teamed with restaurateurs to promote ventilation systems that were supposed to solve the secondhand-smoke problem. Yet within the last year both the U.S. Surgeon General and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, or ASHRAE, have made it unequivocally clear that even the most sophisticated ventilation systems cannot completely eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke. Furthermore, the Surgeon General has concluded, "there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke."

The ventilation solution has been refuted, and economic hardship arguments are becoming equally difficult to defend.

Certainly some restaurants and even more bars take time to adjust to the new laws, but by year's end sales tax and employment figures consistently indicate that businesses adjust to the new smoking laws and customers come back.

If this were not the case, the 54 percent of the nation's restaurants and bars that are now smoke-free would be in crisis.

If restaurateurs give up the fight and stand back and let other industry representatives negotiate these inevitable smoke-free laws, they may find themselves on the losing end of the deal.

When bar, nightclub, private club and casino interests are able to step in and carve out exemptions for themselves, an uneven playing field is created, leaving restaurants at a competitive disadvantage for smokers' business.

Rather than dwell on the past, those locations that have not yet gone smoke-free need to accept the reality that if it hasn't already happened in their area, it almost definitely will within the next year or two.

Prepare for the new clean indoor air environment. Don't invest in costly ventilation equipment that cannot pass the smoke-free-law requirements.

If you're currently building a new restaurant or bar, make it smoke-free voluntarily now, as it soon will be by law anyway.

Society is embracing the smoke-free workplace revolution.

Those businesses able to adjust to the new smoke-free environment will fare far better and adjust more quickly than those that keep digging trenches in retreat.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors and management at Nation's Restaurant News.

Paul McIntyre is the president and chief executive of KIISS, Kids Involuntarily Inhaling Secondhand Smoke. KIISS' mission is to educate restaurateurs, hoteliers and bar owners on the benefits of adopting a smoke-free workplace policy.

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