Update 9:42 a.m. Feb. 26, 2010: Reader Eric passed along this story from our friends at the Winnipeg Free Press:
Initially, the hotel, restaurant and bar industries and Manitoba Lotteries Corp. said the [province-wide smoking] ban would trigger economic apocalypse. MLC suggested there would be tens of millions of dollars less flowing into provincial coffers. Hotels, restaurants and bars foresaw mass layoffs and closures.
However, five years after the ban was enacted, much of the predicted doom and gloom did not come to pass. There were winners and losers, but the hospitality and gambling industries have, on the whole, fared much better than expected.
The hardest hit by far were bar and lounge owners. In 2005 and 2006, the first two years after the provincewide ban was enacted, receipts in these establishments dropped by half.
Well, blow me down if I forgot how to add last night. Yes, I know I said the vote was 5-3 at the Grand Forks City Council work session to have the council ban smoking in bars without going to a referendum. That’s one council member too many! I was thinking something like three out of five members, but was in a rush to fill in other details and just screwed it up. Luckily, I also reported who voted how so it’s pretty clear the 5-3 was really 3-2.
I’m short on time, as always, it seems. So here’s a few issues popping up regarding the smoking ban:
Will it pass muster at council?
There’s a good chance, I think, of the council going along with the recommendations of the work session and not hold a referendum on the issue. We already know Council members Doug Christensen, Eliot Glassheim and Curt Kreun are for it. That’s how they voted last night.
Because this issue could hurt bars, or at least bars think it will hurt them, I would think Council President Hal Gershman would asked to be recused. He’s a liquor store owner and has traditionally avoided any votes concerning bars, mostly because of the potential perception that hurting bars would cause more people to drink at home.
Council member Art Bakken seemed cool with it last time this came up. Doug said he thought Art would side with him, Eliot and Curt. So that’s a 4-2 vote. (Checked my math. That works!)
Even if Art voted with Council members Terry Bjerke and Mike McNamara, who oppose the council passing a smoking ban, there’s still Mayor Mike Brown, who wants a ban and has the power to break a tie.
Survey accuracy
Council member Mike McNamara brought up something that I’d heard about a while back, but hadn’t done anything about. That is, one of the people who conducted that smoking ban survey called to say that when he, the pollster, dialed up a smoker, often the smoker would refuse to take the survey upon hearing it was for an anti-smoking group.
A different person had e-mailed me about this. I checked into it and it turned out not to be such a huge deal, so I didn’t write a story.
Cordell Fontaine, who heads the polling group, UND’s Social Science Research Institute, said the refusal rate on this survey was about 8 percent. I don’t know how big that is in the world of polling — I did ask Cordell, but we ended up laboring over some other point — but let’s assume all of them wanted to leave smoking in bars, that would still be 67 percent of adults favoring banning it in bars. Take away the 3.7 percent margin of error and that’s still 63.3 percent. I’ve probably violated any number of rules of statistics, but you get the drift.
Cordell also said that when someone refuses, he or she is referred to a supervisor, who calls and tries to persuade him or her to take the survey. Is this a bad time? Why don’t we call back in an hour? So the refusal rate is after that.
The reason pollsters do this is because they want the results to be truly random, not just the first random person who will answer the survey.
Bar owners’ opinions differ
A couple of bar owners testified last night at the work session and I was surprised to hear Josh Gilleland‘s take. Unlike many bar owners, who think it will just crush their business, he thought that, in the long run, things will settle down and smokers will get used to not smoking in bars.
In the short run, there’s going to be some pissed off smokers who will decide they’re going to stay home. That impact would probably be immediate. On the other hand, the nonsmokers who claim they’ll go to bars more won’t do so right away because they’re not in the habit of it.
Another bar owner I know said he’s philosophically against a smoking ban — It’s his business and if you don’t like it, stay out. — but doubts there will be much of an impact. The only concern he had was that East Grand Forks bars would enjoy a competitive advantage, which, of course, they don’t any more because Minnesota banned smoking in bars a long time ago.
It’s worth pointing out that the market has demonstrated that whatever demand there is for a nonsmoking bar is adequately met by supply. There were at least two bars that didn’t allow smoking that I know of that went out of business, one was the former Dagwood’s — I never got used to the new name, so I can’t remember it right now. — and Suite 49. Canad Inns has two bars that are smoke free, though I’ve never seen them packed like the downtown bars.
From what I can remember Dagwoods (which became Overtime) was almost always packed. I didn’t go there much because I lived on the other side of town but everytime I stopped by it was packed.
I could be wrong but I remember hearing some rumors (from people I knew that worked there) that Overtime closing had more to do with money being embezzled than actually losing business.
I would point out that Level 10 (a Gilleland owned establishment) is smoke-free, and they seem to do pretty well. Rhombus, as a restaurant, is also smoke-free, but later in the evening it has a bit more of a bar feel, and it does so well that they’ve had to add a second floor and bar. I tend to restrict my business exclusively to the smoke free establishments. If they do pass a ban, I will expand the roster of places I visit. I’ve always liked the Crosstown, but the smoke in that place is oppressive, so I stopped going. If smoke-free, they’ll be getting my business again.
Hopefully the council will move on this quickly.
I just finished watching Charlie Rose and several of the commentators made the same point: That our country has become so polarized in the last several years that it has become nearly impossible for the two sides of the aisle to work together. This is also true in daily life and local issues. People have no sense of compromise anymore. The statement made at the work session that there was no public outcry of any substance, shows none of them read any of the blogs or “talk about it” links in this paper alone. People who want to push something through, whether it’s good or not or even debatable, have become such zealots that they drown out everyone else. In this case, all summer and fall we saw billboards, tv ads, etc., pushing and crying louder and longer for banning smoking, all of which was paid for by the big corporations with a stake in the outcome. Don’t think our little public health department has the money for that. And so this ban is being pushed by the zealots, full of debatable statistics and an odd survey, and the opponents, with no money and tired of the fight with pushy and loud, organized anti-smoking people, have felt there wasn’t much they could do, I think. Besides, was this “work session” even publicized? I didn’t see it on the online Herald.
In other words, the people of GF didn’t initiate this by nagging their council reps, or writing letters, no, it was the public health people and their affiliated groups. Just because the pro-bar-smoking people aren’t as organized and vocal as the antis, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Also, as someone pointed out in a blog, if non-smoking bars were so profitable, why haven’t the owners all done it already? In these economic times, businesses make changes that will bring in more money; every bit helps.
I do believe that when the council passed GF’s law 5 years ago they made a good compromise. They exceeded the state law a bit, but banned smoking absolutely everywhere except bars and truck stops. So it was good. It was restrictive. It was enough. We have had enough. Leave the present ordinance alone, and don’t pass anything more restrictive. I think smokers make too easy a target for the health police. Why aren’t they focusing the same energy on the drinking ordinances in this town, and the subsequent behaviors that follow? Ryan Bakken had a good column the other day, but maybe it was too subtle for the city government. They talk out of both sides of their mouths–come down on smoking but promote drinking (with later hours, more licences, etc.). It is quite hypocritical.
But what do we expect from people who claim to know what’s best for us but whose actions reveal their abnegation of their own ability to discern truth from fiction?
Leave the law as it stands; there is no need for anything stricter.
Joe Black’s has an awesome area for small office parties and get-togethers. But, I can’t deal with the smoke. I know they have missed out on at least 3 functions because of it. That’s in addition to the numerous times I would have eaten there. I did once, that was enough. Good food, good service, bad air.
Nice Manifesto, Anamouse.
Kiss the cigarettes goodbye! Whoo hoo! I can’t WAIT!
Yes, Anonamouse, the anti-smoking campaigns are funded by big corporations- the very same ones that sell cigarettes.
In 1998, the tobacco companies settled lawsuits with 46 states, agreeing to pay a MINIMUM of $206 Billon over 25 years. Each year North Dakota receives it’s share of this agreement. In 2008, the voters of ND voted to create a “tobacco prevention and control trust fund” using money from the settlement.
http://www.legis.nd.gov/fiscal/biennium-reports/61-2009/budget-analysis/legislative/pdf/legislativebudget/tobaccoprevention.pdf
The report above shows the fund receiving around $14 million in the last biennium, and over 13 million in the current.
This money is used to fund tobacco prevention, control, and cessation programs. Local public health units receive money from this state fund. So, yes, they do have the money for it.
http://www.ndhealth.gov/tobacco/
In other words, there’s no conspiracy. (Shocking, I know!) Public health is using the tobacco industry’s own ill-gotten gains to fight the adoption and use of their death-causing products. A just cause, if you ask me. Lung cancer is a nasty way to die.
Leif, in the news in the past few years has been the information that that settlement money has NOT been used as you say–caused quite a controversy, in fact. In 2005, the Tobacco Free Coalition and the GF Public Health Dept. told me they got the money for their campaign, their pamphlets, speakers, etc., primarily from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson (the big pharmaceutical co.), who just happens to make smoking cessation products they’d love to sell. I’m figuring that the same is true this time around.
A lot of the money IS used for the QuitLine programs, hiring phone counselors and shipping out the patches to people, etc. I really do doubt that our Public Health Department has the money for the production and broadcast of the many commercials that have blanketed the stations in the last many months.
Besides, that’s irrelevant to my point, that everyone compromised to a degree in ’05 (and I feel the status quo is fine), but today the fact is that the one side is so zealous that it’s got to be ALL the way they want, no compromise.
Some would like to patronize certain businesses cuz the food and drink is good but the smoke bothers them, others would like to patronize certain businesses but they can’t smoke while they have a drink or after they eat. There are still good options available for all.
There is a very simple solution to this.
make them gather the signatures needed to put it to vote and then have the voters choose.
That way no one can really cry foul. They did everything the way anyone could.
This is coming from someone who doesn’t smoke at all… I’m in bars all the time. I go home and febreeze my clothes. Such is life. Would I like bars to be smoke free? yes! I love going down to fargo and going into any bar and not having to air out my clothes at the end of the night.
But really? Just throw it on a ballot and call it a day. Everyone is entitled to say yes or no. not the people they may or may not have voted for
I only visit places in town that are smoke free (with the exception of Bonzers…those Long Islands are worth the stank at the end of the night!) and am all for a smoking ban.
I find it amazing that countries with great pub and smoking cultures (Ireland and France) are able to maintain business with smoking bans. People complained, but got used to it.
Countries that banned it did have a lot of lost businesses. The ones that survived did so only because they changed from pubs, lets say, to restaurants or music venues.
to ianmore–it’s funny you should say that, because when I go to a bar (I smoke) I air out my clothes from the perfume smell that seems to reek from my clothes!
Understood Cosmopolite. I’m not a fan of the perfume stuff either. I usually dig and spend more for the non-scented soap for my clothes.
I’m not sure how the restaurant/music venue change would work in this town. No one around here seems to want to support local music. with everyone thinking its outrageous to pay a 2 or 3 dollar cover charge to get into the bar…
I’ll say it once again as its all to true. This town see’s bars as places to get drunk at. Not places for entertainment. There needs to be a large shift in advertising and decor in order to get this across to people. When I go to the city’s I’m used to shelling out the 3 or 5 dollar cover. Its part of business. People aren’t ready to let go of their small town bar atmosphere around here but then want to have the entertainment value for no charge… Really??
Does anyone know if the city of Grand Forks is going to do any marketing to promote going smoke free next month?
Does anyone know if the city of Grand Forks is going to do any marketing to promote going smoke free next month?