Naylon won at the trial-court level and won again at the Appellate Division. It was a David and Goliath battle, and David won. Unfortunately, “David” was so financially devastated by the battle that he had to discontinue the fight.

“David” beat back the onerous policy of the county commissioner only to ultimately give up in frustration. Now, he and 25 other people are out of work.

Link

The Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce has released details of a new survey on the impact of the City smoking ban and it shows several business bars in particular are being badly hurt.

The survey polled restaurants, coffee shops, bars, lounges, bingo halls and the Casino . Of those, 93-percent of the bars and lounges contacted say they have suffered losses since the ban was imposed. Of those who say business is down, average losses reportedly averaged 43-percent.

All of them say they have laid off or reduced staff and they also say reduced sales have forced them to cut back on the business they do with their suppliers.

Bingo Halls, meantime, say their losses are at 30-percent or more and the Thunder Bay Casino is also reporting losses, although specific numbers were not made available. Restaurants appear to be affected the least with 74-percent reporting no change in business.

The smoking ban has apparently been good news for bars outside of the city not subject to the ban. The Chamber survey says operators near Thunder Bay are enjoying significant increases especially on weekends. The Casino at Grand Portage, where smoking is also still allowed, is also reporting an increase in its numbers.

Source: Thunder Bay’s Source. Link

Two dozen tables sit unused in a darkened dining room of Pedro’s Mexican Restaurant on Madison’s north side.

Pedro’s owner, Jim Martine, a Neenah native who learned the restaurant trade from his parents when they owned Martine’s restaurant in Appleton, recalls weekends when 200 customers from nearby shopping centers would crowd the dining room, reserved for smokers.

However, he said since Madison passed an ordinance banning smoking in restaurant dining rooms in 2002, those customers have gone elsewhere, along with the jobs needed to serve those customers.

Source: WISinfo.com. Link Expired

My business is down 30 percent, I have had to restructure the working hours of my employees. I no longer need them to work as many hours, and never have to double up and have two bartenders a shift. We don’t get enough customers.

I will be lucky if I break even this year.

Source: theday.com. Link Expired.

The respondents claimed a loss of about $2 million in gross sales during the first half of 2004, a 24.5 percent decrease from the previous year, and 611 lost full and part-time jobs.

Source: Toledo Blade. Link

Now, I and my managers have not been paid for three months. We’ve gone without so that we could pay the bills. I’ve had to let go a third of my staff. And there’s no explanation other than the smoking ban.

A friend in the travel industry told me she lost a $100,000 tour from Germany when the smoking ban went into effect, as they refused to go someplace where they couldn’t smoke.

Source: Grand Forks Herald. Link Expired.

“The research clearly proves that the Dublin pub trade is losing as much as 650 full time staff and 1,300 part time staff. Let’s be clear about the real cost of the smoking ban – up to 2,000 jobs are being lost.”

Source: The Publican. Link Expired

“Manitoba Lotteries Corp. will give severance packages to 269 workers — a move the corporation says is necessary because of Winnipeg’s tough smoking ban.

The ban is expected to drain at least $50-million annually from the lottery corporation’s coffers

Link

WINNEPEG, Manitoba – As reported by the Canadian Press: “Manitoba Lotteries Corp. will give severance packages to 269 workers — a move the corporation says is necessary because of Winnipeg’s tough smoking ban.

“The ban is expected to drain at least $50-million annually from the lottery corporation’s coffers…”

Link

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 consequences, according to Toni Clifford, a bartender at Ace’s, are already apparent. On a normal weekday afternoon, she used to take in at least $30 in tips. Yesterday, she was hoping for $5.

Source: Berkshire Eagle. Link Expired.

Source: Newsday.com. Link Expired

“Bar owners claim they are losing as much as 60 percent of their business as smokers flock to establishments where they can light up.”

“Lora Wilson, owner of Mugsy’s Cafe in Oakdale, said she is losing $150 a day and is cutting back on shifts because she can’t afford to pay her staff of four.”

Source: Norwich Bulletin. Link Expired

The Restaurant Association of Maryland surveyed 150 Montgomery eateries on the ban. Of the 25 respondents, 71 percent had to lay off employees or cut back employees’ hours, said Melvin R. Thompson, the association’s executive director.

Source: Gazette.net. Link Expired.

To see how well the smoking ban here is working out, join Tracy Willows 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.

“I can’t even pay my rent. My parents have been making my car payments for me, but they can’t do that anymore,” she said this week from a booth at the Grand Central Casino, where she is a waitress.

This casino has laid off 15 employees since the Tacoma-Pierce County Board of Health’s new smoking regulations went into effect in earnest Feb. 26. And 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,” Willows said.

Other bar and restaurant owners say they have fired employees or cut back hours because of sudden drops in revenue.

The Grand Central Casino in Lakewood says its gambling take since Feb. 26 is down 35 percent from what it had projected. Its liquor sales dropped by 42 percent, and its food sales are down 25 percent, said regional manager Greg Bakamis.

In contrast, the company’s casino in Tukwila, King County, which allows smoking, has met or exceeded projections during the same period.

In the meantime, Dawn Forsman, a card dealer at Freddie’s Casino in Fife, says her job is on the line. She told the Board of Health this week that her pay has been cut in half during the ban.

“How many people have to lose their cars and their jobs and their homes before you see that trying to protect my health is endangering my livelihood?” she said.

Link

PIERCE COUNTY – Pierce County casinos say the county’s new smoking ban is costing them money and could cost jobs. So, they’re fighting the ban in court.

Grand Central Casino in Lakewood says too many tables are empty; too many dealers have nothing to do. They blame Pierce County’s 2-week-old smoking ban, and they’re already talking layoffs.

And casino workers say they know exactly where their customers are going: They’re heading five minutes away to tribal casinos, which don’t have to obey the county smoking ban.

Link

Since the state’s smoking ban took affect in July, there hasn’t been a lot of laughs at Viva Debris Comedy and Magic Club. Business is down, way down.

“We have lost about 30% of our business which includes 30% of our staff,” said owner Joe Delion.

Source: News Ten Now. Link Expired.

Nine months later, the impact is hardly so clear cut. An examination of government data, public polls, private surveys and interviews with customers, employees and owners of more than three dozen bars and restaurants around the city shows the law having an impact on some businesses, but certainly not on all.

Many bar owners and managers say the smoking ban has hurt business, eroding profits and, in some cases, forcing them to cut back hours or lay off workers. Others say they have seen virtually no effect.

Happy-hour sales on Friday nights at the Whiskey Ward on the Lower East Side have dropped to barely $100, from $600, a co-owner says, and regulars have disappeared along with the ashtrays.

A co-owner of Patroon, a steakhouse in Midtown, says he no longer sees much of a cigar-puffing, after-dinner crowd. And in the meatpacking district, the owner of Hogs & Heifers, where Julia Roberts was once enticed to dance on the bar, says she is considering laying off four employees.

”It’s harder to keep track of everybody going in and out,” said Chuck Zeilfelder, a bartender at Bourbon Street in Bayside, Queens, who opposes the ban. ”It’s common for people to leave money on the bar, and that becomes an issue — how much they left. Also, people leave their drinks on the bar and go out. The drinks get thrown out, and then you have to buy them another round on the house.”

The city chapters of the New York State Restaurant Association mailed out a survey to more than 900 members and found that 88 of the 115 city businesses that responded said they had a decline in bar sales since the smoking ban, and 58 said they had a decline in food sales. In addition, 76 reported that their employees had an unfavorable reaction to the ban, while 18 reported a favorable reaction.

Similarly, an October study commissioned by the Vintners Federation of Ireland interviewed 300 bars and nightclubs in the New York region and found that 66 percent reported fewer customers since the smoking ban, while 15 percent reported more. In all, 78 percent said the impact of the ban on their businesses had been negative.

Sales representatives for wine and liquor companies say the impact has trickled down to them. They say business has dropped between 20 percent and 40 percent since the smoking ban. Similarly, an association for operators of jukeboxes, pinball machines and other games says that revenues have fallen between 10 and 25 percent at bars and nightclubs in New York City.

Owners and employees reported selling fewer drinks and losing customers before dessert. They complained of the need to watch over drinks and money left on the bar and seats left unoccupied by patrons heading out for a smoke. And bartenders said that tips were down, as were overall tabs, and that longtime customers were resorting to alternatives — hotel rooms, private homes and parks — to indulge their smoking and drinking.

Amy Sacco, owner of Lot 61 and Bungalow 8 in West Chelsea, said she had to hire an extra security guard just to make sure the smoking crowd outside does not become unruly. ”It makes the job very unhappy,” Ms. Sacco said. ”Next thing you know, it’s prohibition for cocktails. We’re all responsible for policing it. It’s such a drag.”

Source: New York Times. Link