Nicotine Nannies claim smoking bans are good for business. But if that were the case, could this list exist, and could it be so huge? (Please note, this is only a small sample of articles available on the subject.)
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Lost Lanes proprietor
Natalie Hanks said her establishment has lost 74 regular bowlers from
last season due to the recent state law that forbids smoking in public
spaces. Her husband, Harry, estimated they had 250 bowlers in leagues
last year.
“I would say 65 percent of the dropoff is
related to the no smoking law and the other 35 percent for economy
reasons,” said Hanks, who owns the 14-lane bowling alley and Found
Lounge restaurant (connected to the bowling alley) with her husband
Harry.
“We knew there would be a dropoff, but not this severe.”
“I know of four to six houses in Buffalo that closed due to the no smoking law,” Hanks said. “We’re nervous.”
Jack Tan, Administrative and Finance Manager of Coffeezone has said that from the past week that the smoking ban has been in place, he has noticed that about 30 per cent of his usual customers have stopped coming.
“About 40 per cent of loyal customers are smokers, and that is why we have an outside seating area, but now with the ban, there is no point to have .outside dining at the restaurant,” he said.
AFTER 10 months deliberation officials have ruled a Stourbridge magician’s vanishing lit cigarette trick will not have to disappear.
John Milner, from The House of Magic (UK), Brook Street, has been given limited permission to carry on performing the trick despite the nationwide smoking ban.
John, who is a member of the Inner Magic Circle and International Brotherhood of Magicians, asked Dudley Council whether he could continue to include the trick in his act after the ban on smoking in public places became law in July 2007.
After referring the question to the Local Authorities Coordinating Body on Regulatory Services (LACORS), the council wrote to John on May 30 saying his performance would be exempt from the regulations.
The magician is perplexed by a ruling he cannot demonstrate or rehearse the trick at The House of Magic (UK).
John said: “If anyone in the shop wants to see this trick performed live we will have to step out onto the pavement.”
Another place. Another smoking ban ruining gambling. Australia is the latest place to get hit hard by a recent smoking ban. Poker machine turnover is down at casinos since the ban took affect.
In hotels last month, poker machine turnover was down nearly twenty percent. Millions of dollars are being lost, and some casino operators are blaming the smoking ban, yet other believe there are more
factors at play.
“There is growing evidence that the continuing drop in revenue is not related just to the indoor bans. With petrol prices up substantially this year and several more interest rate increases announced, households are clearly reducing how much they gamble,” said Chief Executive of Clubs NSW, David Costello.
The weather last month also has taken some of the blame from club owners. When it rains heavy like it did last month, smokers are less inclined to go out knowing they will have to go outside in the rain to smoke.
Compared to last year’s March numbers, the numbers are drastically down. In hotels, poker machine turnover is down nineteen percent. Clubs saw a decrease of eleven percent from last year in the same month.
Police have expressed concern at the number of smokers who gather outside licensed venues for a puff, believing that the combinations of mobs on the footpath and passers by present the potential for trouble.
He said the lack of facilities pushed smokers out of a controlled environment and on to the street, citing the assault of a 19-year-old man outside popular venue Club 4 Play last Saturday as an example of
increased potential for violence.
“For example, outside of Club 4Play is far too crowded. It has the potential to go bad and I can see why that assault from last weekend happened.”
On the occasion Chief Insp Carson alluded to, a man had a glass bottle smashed across his face while standing outside the Moorabool St nightspot. Chief Insp Carson said Club 4 Play owner Scott Mackay was working to address the issue.
Nicholas, aged 44, is a smoker and said he hardly goes to the pub anymore.
“I can get eight cans for a fiver, so I stay at home more now. I think the ban is a negative thing, there will be no pubs left here soon. I can’t see how they will survive. It’s against human rights,” he said.
However, 31-year-old Rebecca, also a smoker, doesn’t mind the ban, and prefers eating out in smoke-free pubs.
She said: “It’s a better environment for people to eat, especially for the little ones.
“But I do think it’s bad in a business sense. I work across the road from a pub and they have been dead since the ban.”
Tini Bigs’ owner Keith Robbins, says cigar smokers enjoyed their lounge for 10 years until the smoking ban killed business. He says, “In the first 3 months of the smoking ban, we were down over 40 percent and for the year we were down over 30 percent, and it hasn’t come back.”
Senate Bill 346 would exempt family-owned business, outdoor patios and private clubs from the current smoking ban.
“The time has come to take this step,” Cates said. “Why? Because this measure is hurting business in Ohio.”
The Moose Family Center has experienced a dramatic drop in business, which management blames on the smoking ban.
Revenue for the lodge is down at least 60 percent since the ban, said Larry Turner, govenor of the lodge. To be successful, they need to bring in about $28,000 a week; last week they brought in $16,000, Turner said.
Turner dismisses claims from the American Cancer Society and other pro-smoking ban groups that have said more customers would be attracted to places where smoking is banned.
“It’s a damn lie. It’s not happening. You can’t find that anywhere in Ohio,” Turner said.
“The law ensures that all business will operate on a level playing field with one fair, statewide standard that is easy to enforce. Furthermore, the intent of the law—to protect all workers from secondhand smoke— was clearly communicated to Ohio voters,” [American Cancer Society Nanny] Hoctor said.
(Ah yes, the famous, favorite line of the nannies, a level playing field. They still haven’t figured out their constant use of the phrase reveals the lie of bans being good for business. If they were, there would be no need for their cherished “level playing field.”)
Restaurant and café owners whose businesses are located inside enclosed venues and shopping malls have been suffering a 15 to 20 percent drop in turnover since an indoor smoking ban went into force on May 19 have claimed that it is not the ban but unfair competition that is responsible for plummeting sales.
Shopping mall managers say the sharp fall in turnover was mainly caused by eateries located outside shopping malls, where the ban on smoking will not go into effect until next year. Smokers who spend their time in shopping malls walk out to nearby restaurants that offer a smoke-friendly alternative, a situation mall managers say creates unfair competition. Managers demand that the smoking ban in all restaurants and cafés, scheduled to take effect on July 19, 2009, should either be moved up to an earlier date or their eateries should be excluded from the indoor smoking ban until that date.
{This is fairly typical behavior. When bans hurt one sector but not another, the injured parties often demand that the pain be spread around in the interest of “fairness.”}
In Ireland last month a piece of news was quietly slipped out through the back door that you’ve probably not heard about. The number of smokers among the population has RISEN significantly since the introduction of the Irish smoking ban.
The reasons for this should be clear to all but the heavily blinkered. Prohibition simply does not work. Never has done, never will. Drive something underground and it becomes seductively attractive. Lifetime non-smokers are trying ‘that first cigarette’ so they don’t feel left out when accompanying their smoking friends - you see this all the time outside pubs.
This has come as something of an embarrassment to Irish govt health tzars and the likes of ASH-Ireland who are absolutely furious. “These figures clearly show that no progress is being made despite the immense success of our smoking legislation”, commented Prof Luke Clancy of ASH.
How can ASH declare the ban a ’success’ when all it has achieved is to close around a quarter of Ireland’s pubs, removed choice and destroyed that certain social mystique the Irish were once free to enjoy?
More than a dozen bars and taverns have shut their doors since smoking was prohibited in almost all businesses, and owners of some bars that remain say revenues have plummeted. Tax receipts on food and drink purchases countywide, however, have increased slightly over the past year, and several clubs have invested heavily to install outdoor beer gardens and patios.
Councilman Tom Didier, R-3rd, disagrees with his former colleague. Didier, who sells food to restaurants and bars, said he’s seen how the ban has hurt mom-and-pop places throughout the city.
“It’s been difficult,” he said. “There are still customers today that are hurting.”
Colorado casino revenues in April fell for the fourth straight month since the smoking ban took effect in January, dropping 7.1 percent from March and down 12.5 percent from April, 2007.
It was the second-biggest year-to-year decrease ever, behind March.
In Cripple Creek, revenue fell 6.4 percent to $10.7 million in April, off 13.3 percent from
April, 2007.
Cripple Creek casinos have brought in a total of $42.6 million in 2008, off 14.7 percent from this point in 2007.
SPRINGFIELD — Illinois casino officials continue
to blame the state’s indoor smoking ban as riverboat gambling revenues
have fallen for the fourth straight month, a report shows.
Each of the state’s nine riverboat gambling
sites took in less money in April than they did in the same month last
year, for an average loss of about 19 percent, according to the
Illinois Gaming Board’s monthly report. Each casino also saw its
revenues and attendance drop from March to April.
Revenue drops between April and the same month
last year range from a nearly 27 percent drop in Alton to a 5 percent
decrease in East St. Louis. Casino Rock Island posted a loss in the
same period of 17 percent. Metropolis showed a 25.5 percent loss. The
Empress Casino in Joliet lost about 26.5 percent in revenue over last
April and Harrah’s Casino in Joliet lost almost 18 percent.
Alatus Management, a Minneapolis-based developing company, purchased the building a year and a half ago. After spending 27 years in its current location, it was the decision of Grandma’s corporate office to close the restaurant at the beginning of this summer.
Peterson said she is disappointed that the restaurant is closing because she is finishing finals and now has to find another job.
The president of Grandma’s Corporation, Brian Daugherty, said legislation like the smoking ban has deteriorated the state of hospitality jobs in Minneapolis.
However, there turned out to be an unintended consequence. Cast outside to huddle in alcoves, crouch under awnings, and shiver in the rain, Huntington smokers have to do something with the remnants of their last drag.
Before the new ordinance hustled smokers outside, there were ashtrays inside. Now, even the most environmentally sensitive of smokers revert to a familiar strategy: drop butt to sidewalk, grind with foot, and walk away. For affected merchants, it is an extra burden to clean up the mess that falls onto the gray area (literally) of city sidewalks.
Charity bingo games are being hurt by bans on indoor smoking, with attendance dropping as patrons turn to casinos where they can still light up while playing, the New York Times reported April 24.
Charity gambling revenues fell 13 percent after Minnesota adopted a statewide indoor-smoking ban, with the smoking prohibition blamed for half of the decline. Bingo players who once flocked to the American Legion post in Fergus Falls, Minn., now go to casinos or cross the border to North Dakota, where veterans’ groups are exempt from the state’s smoking ban. “It’s had a profound effect on us here,” said Charlie Lindstrom of the American Legion post. “We’ve sponsored several baseball teams here in the past, but we can’t give as much now because the smoking ban has really reduced our revenue.”
Charity officials in California, New Jersey, New York, and Washington also report that smoking bans have hurt attendance and revenues on bingo nights. Some say that smokers typically outnumber nonsmokers three to one at bingo games, and despair of finding nonsmoking players to replace the departed smokers.
In Minnesota, which adopted a statewide ban on smoking in all indoor workplaces in October, revenue from all charity gambling dropped nearly 13 percent in the last quarter of 2007, compared to the same quarter the year before, according to state officials. More than half of the drop — the equivalent of about $100 million annually — was attributed to the new law, they said.
On a good night, Mr. Lindstrom said, bingo at the post used to attract 50 to 75 players. Nowadays it is more like 30 or 40.
“It’s had a profound effect on us here,” Mr. Lindstrom said. “We’ve sponsored several baseball teams here in the past, but we can’t give as much now because the smoking ban has really reduced our revenue.”
Still, revenues are down. In 2006, the bingo operation at the children’s center, which then belonged to Big Brothers Big Sisters, generated about $325,000 a year, after expenses, and employed 17 people. A year later, under the auspices of the center, it produced $150,000 and employed 13 people.
Washington used to be home to 100 bingo halls that raised money for charity. Now there are fewer than 20.
Punch Taverns Plc, the largest U.K. pub landlord, said first-half profit declined 24 percent after the company sold outlets, a smoking ban kept drinkers at home and consumer spending slowed.
The company had never posted a first-half profit decline since its 2002 initial share sale. Rivals Enterprise Inns Plc and J.D. Wetherspoon Plc have also suffered since England banned smoking at bars and other public places in July.
Punch said today it has reduced the number of pubs it owns by 9 percent to about 8,450 since the first half of last year.
Sixty-four per cent of pubs in England are losing trade since the smoking ban was introduced, according to a survey published by YorView on behalf of pro-choice group Freedom to Choose. Of those establishments, 98% blame the smoking ban for some or all of the loss of trade.
Many landlords report that they have cut staffing levels or opening hours. One landlord commented “the smoking ban is just driving people out of pubs.”
Godfrey Bloom MEP, author of the foreword to the report, said: “With over 20 pubs a week closing, I feel a major cultural platform is being removed from the British people.”
Mick Hudson, treasurer of Seaton Carew Social Club, said: “We are £18,000 down on beer sales in the last six months – and we are one of the clubs that is just about coping.
“When you look at the membership, our figures have dropped from about 450 to around 300 in the last year, so we have lost a third of the members.
“People can buy cheap drink in the shops and stay at home, they don’t want to be standing outside in the cold, smoking. When the members drop, there is a knock-on effect everywhere. The money over the bar drops, we have to put prices up, we don’t make enough to cover the costs of putting entertainment on and so on.
With memberships in decline, once-busy clubs are closing as owners struggle to break even.
But the clubs are not as crowded as you might expect. In fact, if you can find one still open, you should be able to breeze in for a frame pretty much any time.
Club owners warned this week that traditional snooker and pool halls across the country are shutting up shop after a downturn in trade. Many believe the decline is an unforeseen by-product of the smoking ban, now nearly one year old.
Kentish Town Snooker in Holmes Road – once thriving with 18 tables across two floors – closed last year, and next to disappear of the map is the Camden Snooker Club in Delancey Street, Camden Town.
It faces demolition this summer after its regulars were unable to convince a planning inspector – despite a 500-strong petition – that there was enough interest to save it from the bulldozer.
“We have just found out that 50 clubs have closed in the past two years.”
“The whole snooker scene is quieter these days. It is definitely much quieter since the smoking ban. There are fewer young people too.
DENVER — Revenues at Colorado casinos took their biggest hit in year-to-year comparisons since the inception of the statewide smoking ban in January.
According to the Colorado Division of Gambling, casinos made $63.3 million in adjusted gross proceeds in March, down 15.2 percent from $74.5 million in March 2007.
Revenues for January were down 3.6 percent and 10.1 percent in February as compared to last year.
