ISTANBUL (not Constantinople) - Despite Turkey having passed a law in May that created a partially smoke-free environment, the implementation of the smoking ban has been claimed as one of the victims of the global financial crisis as restaurant owners choose to ignore it and hang on to their customers.

However, restaurants and cafes in shopping malls that do not want to lose smokers as customers are ignoring the ban.

The same applies to the Olivium mall in the Zeytinburnu district where some restaurants are ignoring the ban due to the decrease in customers. The proprietor of a restaurant where smoking is permitted in Olivium said, “[The ban] reduced business by 90 percent. We had 11 employees here, now we have five, it is a shame…

Source: Hurriyet Daily News.  Link

AMES, Iowa — People in Ames said the statewide smoking ban that is forcing smokers outside is creating a mess of cigarette butts on streets and sidewalks.

“When we were allowed to smoke in the taverns, we had ashtrays and they were regularly cleaned out and taken care of,” said Reynolds. “People didn’t have to toss their butts out here on the street.”

Source: KCCI.  Link

Carpenter works part time at the Legion. He said the smoking ban has driven away business. Pull tab receipts are down and people who used to be regular customers don’t come around as often and they don’t stay as long. Carpenter said veterans especially, should have a right to smoke in their own club.

“They’ve served their country, and a lot of them are older veterans,” Carpenter said. “They’re not going to stand outside in 35 below zero weather and smoke. I mean, they’ll sit at home and smoke.”

The Bemidji American Legion has been smoke free longer than most bars in the state. That’s because Beltrami County passed a smoking ban ordinance a full two years before the state did. Club manager Bill Rice said the ban is largely to blame for cutting the club’s business in half.

“We were doing two and a half million in business in gross sales a year,” Rice said. “We’re down to a little over a million this year.”

Rice has had to cut three jobs at the Legion since the smoking ban took effect.

Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association interim director Tony Chesak said it’s clear to him the ban is causing bars across the state to fail.

I’d say, realistically, 200 to 300 licensed establishments, at least, have closed,” Chesak said. “I would think that would be a conservative number.”

Membership in the association dropped about 25 percent this year. Chesak said the promise of non-smokers frequenting bars more often because of the smoke free law hasn’t panned out.

“All the anti-smoking folks had said, you know, you get smoking out of your facilities and we’ll come in droves,” said Chesak. “Well, those droves didn’t come out.” {They never do.}

A poll conducted in September shows Minnesotans support the statewide smoke-free law by an overwhelming 77 percent. Gordon said national studies have found that smoking bans don’t hurt businesses in states that have bans in place. {That’s only true of studies conducted by nicotine nannies or the governments that passed the law. The few studies funded by tavern associations show the real, devastating effects.}

Source: Minnesota Public Radio. Link.

The worst year in history for Colorado casinos claimed its first victim Friday, when the Wild Horse Casino in Cripple Creek closed its doors, putting 62 employees out of work.

Revenues for casinos in Cripple Creek, along with Colorado’s other gaming towns, have fallen every month this year. In September, Cripple Creek gaming revenues fell 10.3 percent to $12.8 million compared to the same month in 2007, according to the state Division of Gaming. Statewide, gaming revenue was off 18.7 percent in September and 11.4 percent for the year to date.

Source: Hotel Online. Link.

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.”

Source: Halesowen News. Link

August 2, 2008–State Senator Jack Hatch helped push the smoking ban through the statehouse, and now he’s dealing with an unexpected and unpleasant result.

Smokers at Carl’s Place in Des Moines’ Sherman Hill neighborhood have to take their butts outside. It just so happens that “outside” is right across the street from Hatch’s home.

“I look over there every once in a while expecting somebody to shout something at me, but they don’t. They’re polite,” said Hatch, one of the biggest proponents of the ban.

The irony is as thick as the smoke. A gaggle of noisy smokers abiding by Hatch’s law, but making an eyesore for him in the process.

“I don’t think they know it actually, but I do. And it’s nice for me to be behind the bar and watch out these two big windows and see thirty to forty people out there having a good time and smoking cigarettes,” said bartender Scott Renaud.

Renaud claims he’s lost thirty to forty percent of his tips due to the smoking ban, but he won’t find sympathy across the street, where Hatch says the smokers will come back around. “If someone is really going to be bothered because they can’t smoke, then that’s because that person’s really addicted too badly. I think people will settle into something very comfortable,” Hatch said.

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.

Source: Geelong Advertiser. Link

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?

Source: The Publican. Link

A YEAR after the smoking ban was introduced, pub landlords in north and west Wiltshire have described the “detrimental and costly” effect on their businesses.

Lionel Hadland, who has run The New Inn, in New Road, Chippenham, for the past 18 years, said he had not seen a profit for months.

“I am going to have to approach the brewery and see if I can get a reduction in rent as otherwise I am going to have to move on,” he said.

Mr Hadland who runs the pub with his partner Jane, said they had let a member of staff go because they couldn’t afford to pay her anymore.

The Wiltshire Times reported in May how five pubs in Bradford on Avon were being sold off due to a reported fall in trade, some of which was attributed to the smoking ban.

Peter Everleigh, landlord of The Riverside Inn, said he was selling up because the smoking ban had deterred people from going into pubs.

Source: Wiltshire Times.  Link.

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.

Source: Minnesota Daily. Link

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.

Source: Herald Dispach. Link

A couple say their home next to a village pub has been “blighted” by the smoking ban and are claiming up to £50,000 for the effect on its value.

Neil and Rachel Mutter moved out of the one-bedroom property behind the Silverton Inn, in Silverton, Devon, claiming “stress and exhaustion”.

Their home, The Old Lodge, can only be reached via a partially covered yard beside the pub - which landlord Shane Radmore turned into a smoking area when the new smoking law came into effect last summer.

But when they decided to leave their home and put it on the market for £185,000 they claimed they were unable to sell it because of the situation which followed the smoking ban.

Mr and Mrs Mutter, who moved out to live with relatives, have now made a county court claim for up to £50,000 for the “diminution in value” of their property.

The couple could not be contacted today, but in a county court statement Mrs Mutter said after the smoking law came into effect, up to 15 people gathered in the yard to smoke.

That happened throughout the pub’s opening times and sometimes past midnight, she said.

To get to their home they had to negotiate a crowd of people, around furniture and a cloud of smoke.

Mrs Mutter aid in her statement that they finally moved out because of the “noise, smell, cigarette butts and smoke”.

Source: 24dash.com. Link

The dire financial state of many pubs is revealed in a survey of 500 tenants carried out by the MA.

The most startling statistic is that 10% of pubs are operating at a loss or zero profit.

Also, as many as 78,000 full and part-time jobs may have been lost if the survey results replicate the situation across the 50,000 pubs in England and Wales.

The survey found the average profitability of a pub had slumping by almost 15% in the past year to £24,180.

Of equal concern is that more than half of survey respondents (54%) predicted profitability falling even farther over the coming year.

Nearly six out of 10 pubs (57%) had been forced to shed staff, with an average of 2.75 redundancies per pub.

Pubs where trade was down reported falls ranging between 5% and 40% with the average drop being 18%.

The figures indicate that claims about pubs being repatriated by non-smokers after the ban were over-optimistic.

Source: Morning Advertiser. Link

A ban on smoking in American bars has increased the number of accidents apparently caused by drinking and driving.

US jurisdictions with a smoking ban have seen, on average, a nearly 12 percent rise in the number of drink-related accidents at the wheel, researchers say in a paper published in the Journal of Public Economics.

Researchers found that instead of heading to their local bar for a drink and a puff, smokers ventured farther afield in search of a place where lighting up is still allowed.

They may not be drinking more than before but they are certainly driving more - and that’s what is increasing the risk of a crash.

“Our evidence is consistent with two mechanisms — smokers searching for alternative locations to drink within a locality and smokers driving to nearby jurisdictions that allow smoking in bars.”

Source: Motoring.co.za. Link

Theater night protests are a challenge to a mean-spiritied, shortsighted law.

Your March 16 editorial panned our Theater Night performances in bars as “a clever but wrongheaded protest” against Minnesota’s smoking ban and sniffed that this is a medical, not economic, issue. We disagree. Your editorial focused on physical health and made no room for mental health.

After the smoking ban took effect Oct. 1, many small bars, Legions and VFW posts experienced a precipitous drop in income. Bar owners laid off waitresses they had known since childhood. Bartenders quit school after losing hours and tips. Former customers retreated to ice shacks
on frozen Minnesota lakes to drink and smoke alone.

Public health is more than physical health — clean air and pink lungs. It is also about mental health — keeping company and green wallets. People who drink and smoke alone, who lose their jobs and businesses do not live as well or as long. They need help, not ridicule. These people are socially isolated and financially stressed. Social and financial health deserves to be part of our public health
discussion.

Public health pundits grumble that Theater Night disrespects the law and violates its “spirit.” But this law is mean-spirited and disrespects our veterans and small-bar owners. It makes no accommodation for them.

Last spring, the veterans and small bar owners worried they would lose customers. The Legislature assured them they would see more customers when their businesses were smoke-free, a rosy prediction that turned out wrong.

Theater Night is a blessed respite from the economic desert in which some of our small bars were dying. We now have time to address the mistaken assumptions of last spring. We recommend two healthy accommodations for our veterans and small bar owners.

First, our veterans deserve an exemption. They performed valiantly overseas and continue to perform for their communities through charitable giving. But their revenues dried up after Oct. 1. Granting them an exemption will restore those revenues and their charitable giving.

Second, the smoking ban lets scientists study the effects of tobacco smoke as long as their laboratories are ventilated at the rate of 60 cubic feet of air per minute per person. This is a safety standard that our small bar owners are willing to adopt, even at great cost. Granting such an exemption will give them a chance of survival.

Some may be upset by our approach. But all we ask is to be heard on the subject of mental health as an integral component of public health. Until that day, our show will go on.

Source: Start Tribune. Link

A pub is closing down on Easter Monday due to falling trade following the ban on smoking.

The bar, in Chapel Road, is one of several Yates ear-marked for closure around the country.

Owners, the Laurel Pub Company, which owns more than 400 pubs and restaurants nationwide, said: “We are closing due to the affect of the smoking ban and difficult trading conditions.”

The company says it will be helping the 12 staff to find new jobs. The spokesman said: “Where possible we try to re-locate our staff.”

The Argus has reported landlords reporting takings dropping by £1,000 a week in some pubs. Littlehampton appears to have been one of the worst hit areas with five pubs being forced to shut.

A survey by the Campaign for Real Ale revealed 56 pubs a month are closing across the country.

Source: The Argus. Link

This is an excellent example of how anti-smokers lie with numbers. The first paragraph of the article says:

A smoking ban had no effect on restaurant and bar revenue, according to an analysis of tax records by the Bismarck Tobacco Free Coalition.

Note the wording - no effect on restaurants and bars. But what did they really measure?

Individual businesses were not studied, rather full-service restaurants only were placed in groups of five based on revenue. The five businesses that produced the most revenue were group one, and
so-forth, to the five lowest revenue-generating restaurants.

Full service restaurants are often already non-smoking, and few cater to a smoking clientèle. They are usually not affected, or affected minimally, by smoking bans.

The study claims to have studied bars and restaurants, but in reality only looked at full service restaurants. The completely ignored bars, dinners, pool halls, bingo halls, clubs, - in other words, they intentionally left out the businesses that are harmed by bans.

And then they lie about it, saying they included bars, and implying that all types of of restaurants were studied.

This is typical nicotine nanny behavior. I have yet to see an honest study from their ilk.

Source: Bismark Tribune. Link

The ban on smoking in enclosed public places has caused controversy, but what if you couldn’t smoke in the place where you lived?

Life in a typical mental health unit is not exactly festooned with luxuries. Like all hospitals, they can seem cold, clinical and austere places to many patients.

And life is about to get worse for many of those held in a unit. By 1 July 2008 they must all be smoke-free. Prisons, on the other hand, will remain exempt from the smoking ban.

The move is likely to anger many patients, who are not allowed to leave the unit and are not being punished for any crime. Already three are taking legal action over their right to smoke.

The patients argue the hospital is effectively their home and therefore they should be able to smoke. The new rules even prevent them smoking in the grounds.

“You have the choice to smoke in prison, but not in a mental hospital,” he says. “But prisons are there for punishment, and hospitals are there for treatment.”

“People who use mental health services are twice as likely to smoke as those who do not, and some may use this as a means of coping with distress,” she says.

And there is even an argument that suddenly being made to give up smoking could worsen their problems, suggests Dr Chris Allen, a consultant clinical psychologist.

“If they’re using smoking as a way of assistance to cope with their mental health problems, and then that’s taken away, that could lead to problems being exacerbated.”

Source: BBC News. Link

(Some bar owners, devastated by declining revenues as a direct result of smoking bans, have come up with a clever way to win back their smoking patrons. They declare everything that happens in a bar is a performance, and everyone inside is an actor. The state law allows actors to smoke on stage.)

It’s not exactly the venue you’d envision for a Saturday night performance. But Bugg’s Bar in South St. Paul has become the latest stage for a statement.

“We’re doing it because we’ve lost so much business, and we’re trying to get people back out, trying to get them back in the community, trying to get them back in the bars,” said Crystal Bentson, Manager of Bugg’s Bar.

Patrons at Bugg’s Bar paid two dollars for a sticker entitling them to a role in the bar’s production Saturday night. It also gave them an opportunity to light up, if they desired.
You can call it the second act in an ongoing drama. Turns out, dozens of bars across the state are now treating the smoking ban like a brief intermission.

Kenn Rockler of the Tavern League of Minnesota said he’s heard from more than a hundred bar owners looking for the latest way to deal with a ban they say is bad for business. They think they’ve found it, in a once little known exemption in the state smoking ban that allows smoking in theatrical productions.

“Maybe the people who did the exemption weren’t aware what would happen with it,” Rockler said. “But again, those people are the same people that said businesses wouldn’t suffer.

Rockler estimates more than four thousand people have lost their jobs since the ban went into effect on October 1, 2007.

State Senator Kathy Sheran sponsored the law last year, she said the current activity undermines the intention to “protect people from smoke in all of these places.”

“It’s creative, it’s clever, it shows us a loophole in the law that people will want to find their way through,” she said. “But it will require us to find resources to go back.”

(Yeah, damn those hard working business owners who refuse to go out of business. We must punish them!)

Source Kare11. Link

DALBO, Minn. (WCCO) ― A growing number of bars are turning into temporary theaters to take advantage of a loophole in the smoking ban law.

The Dusty Eagle is the only bar in Dalbo. Since the smoking ban, business has gone down there 30 to 40 percent. The owners are trying something new to attract business. They’re taking a cue from an old TV show to bring back some familiar faces. Last Saturday night, an actual local mail carrier was playing “Cliff Claven” from “Cheers”.

Though there is some performance, no one there at “theater night” is a professional actor. For last Saturday night, the entire bar was being considered a stage and pretend “actors” were smoking as part of the “show”. The Dusty Eagle is just one of the bars using “theater night” to get around the smoking ban.

Judy Cassman, the bar’s owner, is quick to clarify her position.

“We’re not trying to be vindictive, we’re not trying to be sneaky. We’re trying to draw some business and keep a family business going,” said Cassman.

Source: Wcoo.com. Link

Officials of Harrah’s Metropolis riverboat casino claim Illinois’ new smoking ban has resulted in the layoff of about 30 jobs at the casino.

Casino officials claim guests are spending less on entertainment and making fewer trips because of the ban and the casino suffered a drop in visitation compared to the previous six-month average.

Metropolis Mayor Billy McDaniel pointed out Thursday that he predicted when the smoking ban went into effect January 1, that it would have negative consequences on the local economy.

Source: WQAD.com. Link

Quebec’s public security minister is denying he backtracked on a smoking ban in light of a small riot that broke out at the Orsainville detention centre late Thursday night.

A law prohibiting smoking both inside and outside of Quebec’s 18 prisons went into effect on Tuesday. Just before midnight on Thursday between 30 and 50 prisoners began fighting and set fire to a wing of the Orsainville detention centre just north of Quebec City. The section was evacuated for about an hour while firefighters put out the fire. There were no injuries.

0n Friday, Public Security Minister Jacques Dupuis issued a statement saying prisoners would be allowed to smoke outside - an activity that was prohibited under the ban.

Source: Canada.com. Link

Harrah’s Metropolis Riverboat has been forced to lay off over thirty workers in response to declining business. According to casino management, customers of the casino are visiting less frequently and for shorter stays since the smoking ban was enacted.

As casino revenues drop, so do payments to states, revenue which is desperately needed to fund budgets across the country. Can’t the would-be do-gooders relax for once, and allow people freedom of choice?

Source: Online Casino Advisory. Link

Violence in pubs in Preston city centre is being pushed on to the streets because of the controversial smoking ban, police warned today.

Insp Steve Evans said the sudden increase of smokers lighting up outside pubs and restaurants since the ban on July 1 last year has “provoked” trouble in the city centre.

He warned innocent smokers could fall prey to yobs intent on causing trouble by picking fights in the street.

And today, Lancaster police chief, Chief Supt Tim Jacques, said the ban has meant more people are staying at home to drink, sparking more violence in homes and neighbourhoods in the city.

“It stands to reason. If there are 20 people stood outside in the street, someone walking the streets looking for trouble has more people to encounter and a bigger choice.”

He added: “We are not saying smokers are responsible for violent behaviour - but those people stood outside having cigarettes would normally have been in pubs and not encountered the troublemaker.”

Ronnie Fitzpatrick, landlord of the Dog and Partridge, Friargate, Preston, said: “I think there is less tension in pubs because there is more room - the smokers are outside so not as many people bump into each other, which was often a source for trouble.”

Source: Lep.co. Link

“I’ve been loving every minute of it,” said third-year Ashley Meyer wryly as she puffed on a cigarette outside Bar Louie. “You’re drinking your beer, and you have to leave it and go outside into this freezing blizzard.”

“I just don’t get this law,” she added. “I mean, people don’t go to bars for their health.”

Another frequent complaint among students has been the loss of a smoker culture that, until recently, cheerfully lived on in Chicago’s bars.

“It makes for a particular social bond, but now everyone’s having fun and you have to go outside in a self-imposed exile for 10 minutes. Sometimes you feel pathetic,” fourth-year John Elias said. (That is the real purpose of the ban, John.To make you a pariah and feel like a second-class citizen.)

The Cove has also seen a decrease in patronage as a result of the new act. Shawn Sleeper, a bouncer at The Cove, said the ban has resulted in a 25 percent decrease in sales at the bar, a number he attributes to patrons being less inclined to smoke out in the cold. But new problems may arise come summer.

“There’ll be more people out here, smoking, laughing, making noise and then the neighbors start complaining and that’s bad for business,” Sleeper said. He added that the Cove has already been hit with a number of fines for similar reasons in the past few years.

Christopher, a second-year who declined to give his last name, is an occasional bartender at The Cove and a frequent customer of neighborhood bars.

“Before, there were plenty of bars that were non-smoking,” he said. “And that was a choice you made before you went out. Unfortunately now, [the state] has taken the choice away from us.”

Lawmakers in other states have said they passed these laws out of concern not only for the non-smoking patrons of bars and restaurants but for the waitstaff and other employees who were forced to inhale the smoke of others. The latter claim in particular is one with which Christopher takes issue.

“Most people who work here smoke,” he said. “When I did bartend, I smoked a fair amount while I was working. It’s something that most employees participate in.”

But fourth-year Josh Hemley sympathizes with both sides of the debate.
“It’s nice to be in a bar without smoke in your face,” he said. “But I smoke too, so it’s like your mother telling you to eat your vegetables: It’s good and it’s bad.” (No, it’s just bad. It’s good when your mom does it. It’s bad when Big Brother Does it.)

Source: Chicago Maroon. Link