“I just can’t afford to throw people out of here,” said Roger DeRosier, a nonsmoker and the owner of Mr. D’s, where business is off more than 40 percent since the smoking-ban law went into effect July 5.

Source: The Republican. Link Expired.

We’ve given our bar staff lay off notices. There is not a lot of things you can do as a bar owner. It is a very scary thing,” said Waneta Goldstein, manager of the Chances R Motor Hotel of laying off two staff.

Our customers are requesting a smoking environment. Can we value our customer opinions? No, because our government wants to control us even more by engaging a law that eliminates our rights.”

Source: Canoe CA. Link Expired

Minneapolis, Minn. — The dining room in American Legion Post 600 in Champlin is large enough to fit more than 200 people. It features a small stage in the corner for live music, a couple large screen televisions and arcade-style video games. But during lunchtime on a recent weekday, only four customers are present.

Legion managers say business is down 25 percent since the smoke ban took effect in Hennepin County. As a result, they’ve had to layoff one of their 30 employees. Bartender Mary Voss says in her 34 years at this this Post, she’s never seen business so bad.

Voss says business started dropping soon after commissioners enacted the ban in April. The post is located just across the border from Anoka County where there is no ban. Voss says that’s where a lot of the smoking customers have gone.

“And they’ve taken all of our non-smoking customers with them,” she says. “Because our smoking customers and the non-smoking customers are friends, they all hang out together. If they don’t go across the river, they stay home.”

“You can see the business has gone down a lot,” says Voss. “It’s tough.”

Voss says business started dropping soon after commissioners enacted the ban in April. The post is located just across the border from Anoka County where there is no ban. Voss says that’s where a lot of the smoking customers have gone.

“And they’ve taken all of our non-smoking customers with them,” she says. “Because our smoking customers and the non-smoking customers are friends, they all hang out together. If they don’t go across the river, they stay home.”

Data from the Minnesota Department of Revenue shows a decrease in total taxable sales for establishments that sell liquor in Champlin over the past year. In 2004, for the months of April, May and June, Champlin establishments made $1.63 million in total taxable sales. In 2005, that number fell to $1.46 million.

Taxable sales have gone up for establishments in Coon Rapids, which is just across the border into Anoka county.

“Right after the smoking ban took effect, I had a young man come in in his cammies and his dad came in and they each ordered a beer,” says Voss. “He went to light up a cigarette and I told him he couldn’t smoke. Do you know that poor man just came in from Baghdad that day? Does anybody know what it’s like to have to tell someone who’s fighting for us that they can’t even smoke in their own club? That just made me sick.”

Source: Minnesota Public Radio. Link

MADISON, Wis. — Five months after the city’s smoking ban was implemented, tavern owners continue to blame the ban for declining business.

Joe Klinzing, spokesman for the Coalition to Save Madison Jobs, said that regular customers are no longer coming in and virtually no new customers are replacing them.

Klinzing said that he blames the smoking ban.

He said that because of slower business, payroll at his bar is down $17,000. He said that that means the regulation is actually taking money from the same workers the ban was designed to help.

Source: Channel 3000. Link

How’s that smoking ban going? I asked.

“Right now,” Wilson said, looking around the 19th Century room with its carved cherubs, tin ceiling and massive oak back bar, “it’s just me and two other people in the place.”

Source: Chicago Tribune. Link expired.

Many business owners say the ban, approved in a bitter contest in May 2002, by 52 percent of Tempe’s voters, was the reason their profits hemorrhaged.

“My bar business after 9 p.m. dropped $200,000 a year. Not only did it drop, it dropped overnight,” said Steve Goumas, owner of Rúla Búla on Mill Avenue. He said revenue is only now returning to the levels before May 2002.

Many quickly sunk tens of thousands of dollars into constructing patios to afford customers the chance to light up, only to see their investments fail to pay off in a timely fashion.

Bar owners and musicians maintain the ban has had a profound impact on venues featuring local musicians.

“It killed the music scene in Tempe,” Goumas said.

Longtime local musician and non-smoker Walt Richardson has called Tempe home since 1974. The folk and reggae performer hosts weekly open-mike nights in Mill Avenue venues.

“There was definitely a night-and-day difference,” Richardson said. “(The ban) affected how many people would come out to the shows. People were afraid they could get arrested, in terms of the way the laws read on the smoking ban.”

Source: The Arizona Republic. Link