VS: Bars are often hard hit by statewide smoking bans

BY BILL HANNEGAN

Missouri state Sen. Joan Bray recently introduced statewide anti-smoking legislation. IS IT TIME FOR A SMOKING BAN IN MISSOURI?

Three years ago, when County Councilman Kurt Odenwald first sought to impose a smoking ban in St. Louis, I felt revolted that such a restriction should be placed on people who simply like to smoke in their neighborhood bars and want to be left alone. My friends and I fought back against Mr. Odenwald with a grassroots campaign of signs, flyers, letters and phone calls that helped defeat the ban. But here we go again! State Sen. Joan Bray has just proposed a smoking ban for the entire state of Missouri that again includes bars.

Missouri bar owners should fear Bray’s smoking ban. Hundreds of bars across America have gone out of business due to such government imposed smoking bans. For instance, a new smoking ban in Columbia, Mo., has already caused bars to close. The month old Illinois smoking ban is causing the Illinois bar business to plummet and will likely add many more bars to the toll of bars killed by anti-smoking legislation.

Federal Reserve economist Dr. Michael Pakko corroborates anecdotal evidence of bar distress in the January issue of The Regional Economist with research showing that bars are hard hit by statewide smoking bans. Dr. Pakko cites the only peer-reviewed economic study of the effects of smoking bans not derived from data gathered either by public health groups or the bar/restaurant industry, but solely from government employment data, which shows the huge detrimental effect smoking bans have on bars. Smoking bans could cut bar jobs in some states by 14 percent!

The best way to avoid this economic harm is to keep the decision to ban smoking in any bar the choice of the owner of that bar, not the government. People forget that the bar owner can ban smoking in his establishment any time he likes, according to his own desires, or in response to the demands of customers or employees, for all or part of the time the business is open. The overwhelming majority of Missouri bar owners currently choose to allow smoking in their establishments and want to keep that freedom to allow smoking. The dangers of secondhand smoke in bars and restaurants would have to be both very large and established beyond a reasonable doubt for the government to justly override the decision of the bar owner to allow the use of a legal product by informed adults on his property and so threaten his business.

Some of the best research, however, calls the dangers of secondhand smoke into question. For instance, the longest-running and highest-quality secondhand smoke study ever done, Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98, published in the prestigious British Medical Journal was completed too late (2003) to be included in Surgeon General Carmona’s report, and found no link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer or heart disease. The strongest finding of the 1998 World Health Organization’s secondhand smoke study was that children exposed had 22 percent greater chance of developing lung cancer later in life. Antismoking advocates promise that smoking bans will slash the heart attack rate in Missouri, but a recent study by St. Louis researcher David Kuneman and colleague Michael McFadden, a thousand times larger than any previous study, has found that smoking bans have no effect on heart attack rates.

Most to the point, an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study of tavern workers in 16 major cities found that the tobacco smoke exposure of a bartender in the smokiest bar to be the equivalent of at most a single cigarette per 40 hour work week. A single cigarette worth of smoke each week should not be the basis of a public health intervention!

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) agrees. This government agency charged with the protection of worker health has refused to ban workplace smoking. OSHA has established PELs (Permissible Exposure Levels) for all the measurable chemicals, including the 40 alleged carcinogens, in secondhand smoke. PELs are levels of exposure for an 8-hour workday from which, according to OSHA, the risk, if any, is small enough to be tolerated.

Any bar can hugely reduce the secondhand smoke exposure of both its patrons and employees by installing air filtration machines. These affordable and readily available machines not only remove tobacco smoke, but also all other toxins, pathogens and irritants from bar air, including viruses, bacteria, chemicals, pollen, dust, mold, fungi and, most importantly, radon decay products, which the EPA claims causes 21,000 lung cancer deaths per year, seven times more than secondhand smoke is reputed to cause. I believe air filtration constitutes the best solution to the secondhand smoke problem in Missouri bars.

But antismoking groups want no secondhand smoke compromise for Missouri bars. These groups will settle only for a total ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. This public health extremist authoritarianism, with its harsh lack of lerance or respect for diversity, scares me. It is distressing to hear antismoking public health groups like the American Cancer Society, and its local front group, Smoke Free St. Louis City, argue that since smokers are only 20 percent of the population, their desires for indoor expressive association away from the rain, wind and cold should not be respected. They say, “In America, the majority rules!”

I call the group I have formed to fight for the property rights and personal freedoms of St. Louisans against such overbearing government action “Keep St. Louis Free!” Senator Bray’s smoking ban is our next target. I hope some Vital Voice readers will read the writing on the wall and join the fight!

Bill Hannegan is founder of Keep St. Louis Free. You can e-mail him at hanneganlounge@safeplace.net or visit keepstlouisfree.blogspot.com.