There is a new rejuvenated push to ban smoking in private businesses in Indianapolis. Evan Matthews of the Libertarian Party of Indiana had a great op-ed on the topic.
Smoking bans are onerous, misguided and dangerous. As Indianapolis lawmakers debate whether the Circle City requires more stringent smoking legislation, they should stop to consider the economic and realistic implications.
The owner of a private establishment, be it bar, bowling alley or barber shop, should be able to determine whether or not smoking is permissible on their property. Proprietors would display a sign on the door, reading either “Smoking” or “Non-Smoking,” both enforced with vigor. Individuals would then be able to make informed and individual choices, free from government coercion.
About three-fourths of the population are non-smokers. Establishments would be foolish to alienate this huge market. As a result, many will enforce their own bans in order to cater to clientele. Government intervention isn't needed to create non-smoking environments in private establishments.
One highly visible side effect of smoking bans is their adverse economic effects. A Montreal Economic Institute study examining several Canadian cities concluded that sales at bars and pubs were 22.5% lower than they would have been without the ban. Interestingly, the article adds that the population's smoking rate remained at 25%, about a fifth above the national average, despite the ban, providing evidence that prohibitive measures do not change smoking habits. (Footnote 1)
A ban in Dallas prompted a study by two economists from the University of North Texas. They concluded that the ban contributed to an $11.8 million decline in alcohol sales, with restaurants experiencing individual declines of 9 to 50%. (Footnote 2)
In July, 2003, New York state imposed a ban on smoking in enclosed public places of employment. The year after the ban, the state lost $37 million in gross state product in the bar and tavern industry alone. Also, 2,000 workers lost their jobs, adding up to $28.5 million in lost wages and salary payments. (Footnote 3)
According to a study by The Economist, the number of pubs closing per week in Britain doubled after a 2007 smoking ban. (Footnote 4)
In a study analyzing 2,724 pubs in Scotland and England, researchers found that the Scottish smoking ban led a 10% decline in sales and a 14% decline in customers. (Footnote 5)
Columbia, Mo., enacted a smoking ban in 2007. According to an analysis by Michael R. Pakko, a research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the legislation is responsible for shocking revenue declines of 6 to 11.5% in bars and alcohol-serving restaurants. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that individual establishments lost up to 30% of total revenue due to the ban. It also caused a 5% sales decline in diners and other restaurants. (Footnote 6)
In the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, how will our struggling economy benefit by inflicting similar damages on Indianapolis business owners?
But what about the health risks to patrons and employees?
Even the federal government admits that the dangers of secondhand smoke are greatly exaggerated. The United States Occupational Safety and Health Act, designed to enforce safe work environments, determined that the dangers of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) were negligible and are not subject to government interference. (Footnote 7)
A study published in the British Medical Journal followed 35,500 non-smokers with smoking spouses for 28 years. The long-term study found no causal relationship between second-hand smoke exposure and increased tobacco related mortality, although it conceded that a small effect could not be ruled out. (Footnote 8)
In 1992, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its influential report, Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders, extolling the dangers of secondhand smoke. A federal judge (Flue-Cured Tobacco Coop. Stabilization Corp. v. U.S. EPA) declared that the EPA “publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun; excluded industry by violating the Act's procedural requirements [and] adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the Agency's public conclusion.” The critique added that the “EPA disregarded information and made findings on selective information; did not disseminate significant epidemiologic information; deviated from its Risk Assessment Guidelines; failed to disclose important findings and reasoning; and left significant questions without answers.”
If secondhand smoke is a real and recognized hazard, the market will adjust and fairly compensate workers who subject themselves to potentially unhealthy environments. The wages of fishermen and loggers are inflated precisely because of the risk that they put themselves in. If smoke exposure is dangerous enough, employers will be forced to increase wages, lest the employees seek greener and safer pastures.
Perhaps worst of all, prohibitive legislation has been shown to increase alcohol-related fatalities. Bans give patrons incentives to drive farther in order to find bars that allow smoking. Studies have shown (Footnote 9) that smoking bans increase the number of DUI arrests. A June 2008 study published by the Journal of Public Economics examined alcohol-related accidents in neighboring counties where only one enforced a smoking ban. It concluded that towns that enacted smoking bans from 2000 to 2005, on average, enjoyed a 13% increase in drunk driving fatalities the following year. Of particular note, a ban in Boulder, Co., increased fatal accidents in neighboring Jefferson County by more than 40%. When the study analyzed all border counties (where one has a ban and the other does not), it found that alcohol-related accidents increased by nearly 25%. (Footnote 10)
Smoking bans are heavy-handed attempts to control individual preference and limit choice. As a by-product of this oppressive, one-size-fits-all legislation, local business owners will likely face revenue declines in the tens of millions. Stubborn smokers will travel to neighboring counties, driving business out of Indianapolis in order to drink and smoke in peace. Afterward, they'll drunkenly swerve their Buicks and Camrys through Circle City streets, recklessly endangering the Marion County populace.
All because adults aren't trusted to choose smoking or non.
Footnotes:
1. http://www.tlw.org/public/content/Documents/Smoking%20Ban/Economic_Impac...
2. http://www.tlw.org/public/content/Documents/Smoking%20Ban/Economic_Impac...
3. http://www.tlw.org/public/content/Documents/Smoking%20Ban/Economic_Impac...
4. http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14...
5. http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/36/1/149
6. http://research.stlouisfed.org/regecon/op/CRE8OP-2007-002.pdf
7. http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=INTERPRETA...
8. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057
9. http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10...
10. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V76-4RHWP04-2...
Comments
As a non-smoker who sometimes chooses to be in a smokey environment, I agree.
Your argument is silly. So, it's a bad thing when alcohol sales go down? It's a bad thing when fewer people are out drinking at pubs and then driving home in toxicated? It is also bad that servers and waitstaff would no longer have to be subjected to second-hand smoke for up to eight hours a day?
When you state your statistics for recent years, since 2007, you can pretty much throw out your stats. Of course business is going down and pubs are going out of business, there is a recession. Have you not heard about this recession?
Bloomy, are you saying it's a good thing if a restaurant or bar goes out of business due to a smoking ban and puts people out of work?
You sound like you think people losing their jobs due to smoking bans would make you happy.
The Chemistry of Secondary Smoke About 94% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a slight excess of carbon dioxide. Another 3 % is carbon monoxide. The last 3 % contains the rest of the 4,000 or so chemicals supposedly to be found in smoke… but found, obviously, in very small quantities if at all.This is because most of the assumed chemicals have never actually been found in secondhand smoke. (1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80). Most of these chemicals can only be found in quantities measured in nanograms, picograms and femtograms. Many cannot even be detected in these amounts: their presence is simply theorized rather than measured. To bring those quantities into a real world perspective, take a saltshaker and shake out a few grains of salt. A single grain of that salt will weigh in the ballpark of 100 million picograms! (Allen Blackman. Chemistry Magazine 10/08/01). - (Excerpted from "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains" with permission of the author.)
JOINT STATEMENT ON THE RE-ASSESSMENT OF THE TOXICOLOGICAL TESTING OF TOBACCO PRODUCTS"
7 October, the COT meeting on 26 October and the COC meeting on 18
November 2004.
"5. The Committees commented that tobacco smoke was a highly complex chemical mixture and that the causative agents for smoke induced diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, effects on reproduction and on offspring) was unknown. The mechanisms by which tobacco induced adverse effects were not established. The best information related to tobacco smoke - induced lung cancer, but even in this instance a detailed mechanism was not available. The Committees therefore agreed that on the basis of current knowledge it would be very difficult to identify a toxicological testing strategy or a biomonitoring approach for use in volunteer studies with smokers where the end-points determined or biomarkers measured were predictive of the overall burden of tobacco-induced adverse disease."
In other words ... our first hand smoke theory is so lame we can't even design a bogus lab experiment to prove it. In fact ... we don't even know how tobacco does all of the magical things we claim it does.
The greatest threat to the second hand theory is the weakness of the first hand theory.
There can never be a safer cigarette ... safe is safe!©
1)The government shall NOT take Private property for public use without DUE COMPENSATION.
2) Smokers contribute more in taxes than they take out. We pay for things like roads, parks, gov services, and OTHER people's children's health insurance (SCHIP).
3) We have the Right To Assemble. If you don't like smoke, don't patronize the same places as smokers. Leave us alone.
4) We are a Constitutional Republic, not a Direct Democracy of mob rule. That means that the majority may NOT vote away the rights of ANY minority.
5) Non-smokers have the right to open up their own establishments.
6) To learn about all the studies of Passive smoking ever conducted, read Christopher Snowdon’s “ Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking", (who's done a fantastic job, by the way) has compiled a full, annotated list of every passive smoking study ever conducted.
As expected, of course, the majority of Studies come up w
comment continued...my comment got cut off..
As expected, of course, the majority of Studies come up with either Null (no association either way) or Negative (passive smoking reduces the risk of lung cancer).
7)What we have here is bigotry and hatred; business as usual for the pharmaceutical companies, their "non-profit", "foundation" partners in social denormalisation like RWJF, Tobacco Free Kids, ASH (a hate group that promotes a book that speaks of poisoning smokers). Somebody's making a lot of money off of these bans & it's not the bar or restaurant owners with smoking customers.
I come through Indy regularly www.libertyvan.com, I've been boycotting it for a few years now. I thought they ALREADY HAD a smoking ban - at least in restaurants? As a NONdrinker, who LOVES to eat out, I will NEVER pay for a restaurant meal if I can't also enjoy the best cig of the day, the one after I eat - INSIDE with the 'white folks'. I am perfectly capable of feeding myself - don't need a restaurant for that. I pay for a restaurant to sit down and be waited on, and relax - not be forced outdoors into inclement weather every time I want to smoke - and NOT to be force into quittin. I don't think it's fair for only the restaurants to pay for the smoking bans, so I've quit buying gas or ANYTHING in Indy. BTW, nothing stinks worse than a 'smoke free' bar. Smoke is the ONLY thing that can cover up the alcohol stink. Traffic at www.aalf.ws/SMOKERS-BOYCOTT has been tripling every week lately too - let me know if there is NOT a restuarant smoke ban in Indy, I'll correct the webpage
The theory is very simple. Whoever owns the restaurant and the bar gets to decide whether or not smoking is allowed inside the building.
What these smoking bans represent is a brand of communism, it says the government really owns your business because they can tell you what you can and cannot do. The people screaming for the bans will still turn around and say "This is a free country, you can do what you want"
It's hypocrisy and it reeks of communism in regards to property rights
Forget the tobacco companies! Forget the excuses! Just repeat after me: It's not YOUR bar
4th Coast Cafe in Kalamazoo, MI, smokey coffee shop. All of the baristas and the owner wish that Kalamazoo would pass a smoking ban that way they could get their grubby hands on the money the nonsmokers have without alienating the smokers and losing -their- money -- and the government gets the blame rather than the shop.
As a smoker who feels for all my comrades, I say we all switch to the alternative and put the Regular Cigs behind us. With the TAX rising on them more and more it seems like a DEAD end, LITERALLY.
www.Crown7.com has your answer. There is no second hands smoke, no tar, no all the bad carcinogens as in regular smokes and no ash and smell.
Somebody's spent more time reading a lot of tobacco websites and tobacco-funded studies rather than actual, real science.
It sort of like the drivel from that world-wide spam king Harleyrider, who is too cowardly to actually appear in front of legislative bodies to account for his misrepresentations.
Popular on those screwball websites--and Harleyrider's spam--is that lawsuit verdict (by an ex-tobacco lobbyist in NC) that happens to have been tossed out. Neither Evans nor Harleyrider think people need to bother their little minds with that information.
Don't be a gullible fool for these fanatics and gulls; stick with regular science. Stay off the Flat-Earther's sites.
The truth can easily be found.
The comprehensive 2006 Surgeon General's report is at:
surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/
National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute Research:
dccps.nci.nih.gov/tcrb/index.html
PubMed Central:
pubmedcentral.nih.go
I'm torn on second hand smoke. My grandma suffered lung problems her whole life from what I was told was due to second hand smoke from her parents smoking around her all the time when she was a kid.
I've heard lots of different people say second hand smoke isn't as bad as everyone says either. I don't let people smoke in my house because of my 6 year old daughter.
Regardless, if you don't want to be around cigarette smoke in a restaurant or bar then don't go if you think the problem is to bad. If enough people boycott the establishment will lose enough money they will be forced to enact their own smoking band.
Voluntaryism, become a fan
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