Slauson said he hasn’t seen anything like this drop in sales during the past 24 years that he’s owned the business…

Administrator Richard Zurn said the smoking ban has cut bar business in half at the lodge.

“It’s hurt our business tremendously,” Zurn said Thursday. “It’s way, way down…”

“People used to come in and stay,” he said. “Now they come in, have one beer, and leave.”

Source: The Daily Star.  Link Expired.

To illustrate his feeling that the government has overstepped its bounds and decimated New York nightlife, he recounted a conversation he had had with a woman who supports the ban gleefully, who quipped obliviously that “my hair doesn’t stink, my clothes don’t stink, and there’s so much room at the bar.”

Despite what naobobs like Dr. Gemson and Assemblywoman Glick seem to think, the smoking ban has done far more to harm small business than it has to prevent smoking. An entire underground economy has sprung up around the ban to provide places for smokers. Knights of Columbus halls and private smoking dens are common, and bars spill crowds of smokers into the streets. Since the ban has been enacted noise complaints have skyrocketed, providing headaches to precinct captains citywide and proving a serious detriment to residents’ quality of life. Rarely noticed, bar owners in lower Manhattan still suffering from 9-11’s aftershocks are now victimized by thoughtless laws.

I spoke to Sandee Wright, owner of Whiskey Ward on Essex Street and a fierce opponent of the ban, put in place, ostensibly, to protect employees from the dangers of second hand smoke. Standing 5’3” with pink highlighted hair and a black skull and bones tank top, Sandee hardly fits the role of Dickensian wage master. When asked about the issue of employees’ health she retorted that “it’s not all that healthy when bartenders can’t afford their rent.” So far falling profits have led her to let go of two employees and cut back shifts. Often times her husband Max works the door to eliminate costs. When unemployment hits “health insurance is the first thing to go,” she said.

Whiskey Ward has seen profits drop by at least 20% since the ban hit. Manhattan Beer Distributors concurs. Stagnant sales have led to a 7% drop in beer demand citywide, and a 19% drop citywide to clubs.

Source: New Partisan. Link

A Lakewood, Wash., casino (with restaurant and bar) has laid off 15 employees since the Tacoma-Pierce County Board of Health’s new smoking regulations went into effect in earnest Feb. 26. Managers say they will lay off 40 to 50 more if the business slump, which they blame on the ban, continues.

“My tips have gone down from $70 or $80 a day to less than $20,” Tracy Willows said at the end of her shift, when she is shaking her head at the 20 bucks — if she’s lucky — in her pocket and wondering if her pay will be enough to fill her gas tank, much less put food on the table or buy gym uniforms for her two kids.

Source: In-Forum.com. Link Expired

The city centre pub in Galway, western Ireland, has seen its business drop by 60 percent since March when smoking in workplaces became illegal.

With ruin staring him in the face, co-owner Ronan Lawless felt he had to act.
“We had absolutely no option,” Lawless, 33, told RTE state radio on Wednesday. “We were going to be out of business in the next month anyway.”

About 200 people packed into an upstairs room at the pub on Tuesday evening for a cigarette in the first major challenge to the nationwide ban.

Health Minister Micheal Martin described what happened as “an unacceptable defiance of the law” and warned others not to follow suit. “You can take it from me there will be no holds barred in terms of taking this head-on and upholding the law in all its aspects,”

(Isn’t it nice when a nicotine nanny with nothing to lose brings down the full weight of government force on a small business owner desperatey trying to save his livelihood.)

Source: Swissinfo.ch Link