City smoking bans drag down business for some
In Pueblo, bar and restaurant owners tick off the list of businesses that have closed since a nonsmoking ordinance was passed two years ago.
There’s Mugsy’s and the Town Tavern, longtime watering holes near the Rocky Mountain Steel Mill; Bruno’s Beer Joynt downtown; Pepper’s, a northside dance club; and The Silver Saddle, a decades-old dance hall on the south side.
Pete Meersman, president of the Colorado Restaurant Association, said Pueblo’s experience is typical of a migration in Colorado cities that have banned smoking. Smoking customers simply move from restaurants and bars inside the city to those outside.
“If you take Pueblo, Fort Collins and all of these cities, there are places just outside the city limits that saw an increase in business, especially the bar crowd,” Meersman said.
The Restaurant Association of Maryland found that restaurant and bar business fell by 11 percent in Talbot County during the year after a smoking ban was enacted.
“We found that the economic damage to smaller independent restaurants and bars was much more significant than large chain restaurants,” said Melvin Thompson of the Restaurant Association of Maryland.
Source: The Rocky Mountain News. Link expired.
