KNOXVILLE (WATE) — According to the health department, the smoking ban law says that an establishment has to allow all smoking all the time, or never at all.

On Sunday nights, the Electric Cowboy has ‘College Night’ which is the only night those under 21 can enter and the only night it is smoke free.

The health department’s interpretation of the law says this is illegal. Van Veelen believes this is up for debate and will be debated in the next legislative session.

Van Veelen believes the law was written without thinking of consequences. Another unintended consequence is having to lay off those under 21 if the establishment allows smoking. He’s had to lose about ten employees and thinks this is another part of the law that needs to change.

(Once again, the nicotine nannies protect workers right out of a job.)

Source: wate.com. Link

KNOXVILLE (WATE) — Two weeks have passed since the statewide smoking ban went into effect and for some restaurants, like Charlie Peppers on Cumberland Drive, business has been shaky.

But manger Chad Hensley says he thinks their decision to allow smoking and go 21 and up on customers will pay off in the long-run.

For now, Hensley says he’s more preoccupied with hiring employees to replace the seven underage employees he lost.

All of them were under 21 and couldn’t work at Charlie Peppers anymore there since it now allows smoking.

“I lost a pretty good amount of very dedicated employees,” Hensley says.

One of the restaurant’s former cooks spoke with 6 News Wednesday, saying the law is unfair and he didn’t expect to lose his job.

“It’s rough when you lose your job any time, especially when you weren’t fired, you didn’t quit, and you weren’t ready to lose it,” says Andrew Sayne, 20. “I put my heart and soul into the job.”

(How dare he be ungrateful to the nicotine nannies who cost him his job. Doesn’t he know they’re doing it for his own good?)

Hensley says the restaurant made the decision to go 21 and up because Charlie Peppers has more of a night time bar atmosphere, and a good number of his patrons want to drink and smoke.

The UK’s casinos and bingo halls are suffering the fallout from the recently imposed indoor smoking ban. Profits are falling and share prices are sinking dismally.

The new law, introduced in July, which means smokers must go outside if they want to light up, causes gamblers to spend less time at the table and more time hanging around outside. Casinos and bingo halls are investing in outdoor areas, in a bid to keep their customers warm, happy and spending. Having to adapt, some bingo bosses have suggested ‘bingo gardens’ where patrons can continue to play outside whilst indulging in a cigarette. However, unpredictable English weather is likely to put paid to this idea.

Analysts say that smokers spend on average 10% of their playing time on cigarette breaks, and aside from the time lost, once they have left the table, they are less likely to return, after mulling over their losses. Whereas players used to use the slot machines in the breaks, they are now more likely to head outside for a smoke.

In the summer, Gala, Britain’s biggest bingo network, forecast the closure of around 7% of its 170 clubs, due to the predicted impact of the smoking ban. In September, Mecca Bingo announced it was cutting 200 jobs as it struggled to cope with falling profits.

Source: Casino Times. Link

Whitby mental health patients forced offsite, leading neighbours to complain about loitering

He’s 53, with sad eyes and not much to look forward to. One of his few pleasures in life is a coffee and cigarette.

But the Whitby Mental Health Centre, his home for the past 10 years, wants to deny him that in the interests of “recovering best health.”

Translation: no smoking anywhere in the hospital or its 32-hectare waterfront property.

“It’s very, very frustrating,” he says, cigarette in one hand, foam cup in the other, in a small, town-owned parking lot a five-minute walk away.

“They’re telling me to quit. I don’t want to. I’ve been smoking for 40 years.”

He says he makes the long walk across the grounds 20 to 30 times a day. “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

The smoking ban, implemented last June, has raised the ire of area residents and the Whitby Yacht Club, whose driveway runs past the parking lot where patients and staff congregate.

They complain of litter, butts and public urination. Some are intimidated by the “crazies,” as one sailor described patients.

“It’s a little bit threatening when it’s a whole load of people loitering around out there,” says the club’s vice-commodore Jim McMaster, adding they have concerns over fire risks and their boats’ security.

“Something has to be done. I understand … that they don’t want people smoking but you don’t force them off your property and onto someone else’s because you can’t figure out how to deal with them.”

The ban, imposed on the hospital’s 330 in-patients, 1,000 staff members, outpatients and visitors, is part of their mission to help patients become healthy and reintegrate into the community, says president and CEO Glenna Raymond. She adds statistics are “staggering” for smoking-related illnesses in the mental health sector.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Raymond says of the no-smoking policy, put in place after months of study.

“But it was the right move to make.”

(Yeah, why should your mentally ill patients be allowed any comforts that aren’t politically correct?)

An “unintended consequence” was the stigma around mental illness that’s surfaced in the community, Raymond says. Patients may not be ready for independent living but they pose no threat and “there’s no reason to confine them.” They have as much right to smoke in the community as anyone, she says.

That stance angers Whitby Councillor Elizabeth Roy and the “numerous” residents who have complained about encounters with patients near their homes, in a park and along a waterfront trail. Their quarrel is with the facility, not its occupants, she says.

“The fault goes back to the hospital, which is pushing patients and staff away from the facility into the community,” says Roy. “The solution is to give them a designated area” as other health facilities do.

That won’t happen, says Raymond. While the hospital is “committed to being a good neighbour,” a smoking shelter would run “contradictory to the aims of the policy.”

(Her policy of being a sanctimonious nanny, no doubt.)

But one patient says it’s difficult to concentrate in his group therapy when he’s worrying about when he’ll get his next cigarette.

Then there’s the problem of the cigarettes themselves. “They’re confiscated if we have them in the hospital. We’re supposed to hide them outside, off the property.”

It all combines to make a difficult life that much more trying, says a heavy smoker.
“We just want to have a cigarette.”

(Does this strike anyone else as just being nasty for the sheer joy of it? Evidently Glenna Raymond, needs to feed her power trip on the backs of the mentally ill patients she’s supposed to care for, but obviously doesn’t care about.)

Source: The Star.com.  Link

ALMOST 70 per cent of North West councils have suffered a surge in cigarette litter on their streets since the smoking ban was introduced.

That’s according to Keep Britain Tidy, which today revealed the amount of cigarette ends blighting our streets shot up by 43 per cent since the start of the ban.

Link

Since the smoking ban came into force on July the 1st, smokers are spending over 20 extra hours outside each month so putting themselves at greater risk of skin damage.

Research from Boots shows that an alarming 60% of British sunburn cases occur on home turf, a figure set to rise with the smoking ban taking more people outdoors.

To help prevent the Smoker’s Burn phenomena, the UK’s leading health and beauty retailer has teamed up with the Laurel Pub Company to offer £300,000 worth of free sun cream to punters across the UK.

Since the smoking ban came into force on July the 1st, smokers are spending over 20 extra hours outside each month so putting themselves at greater risk of skin damage.

Research from Boots shows that an alarming 60% of British sunburn cases occur on home turf, a figure set to rise with the smoking ban taking more people outdoors.

(I consider this a very silly story, and published it here just for fun. It does, however, show how nannies of all flavors freak out at the tiniest increase in any risk.)

Source: GMTV. Link

At Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, a patient wheeled his IV out to the sidewalk by the parking lot to smoke. Another smoker crossed a busy interstate off-ramp to smoke on the overpass.

Source: Today’s THV. Link

Peggy Silvasy, a Delafield Road resident, on Monday signed a petition to lobby for a smoking shelter on the St. Margaret campus.

“They’re in front of the house all hours of the night,” said Silvasy. “Let them go back to the hospital and smoke.”

All 18 UPMC facilities on July 1 went smoke-free, clearing the campus of smoke, ashtrays and cigarette butts scattered about. That sent nicotine addicts into the neighboring community, walking the streets to have a puff.

At the same time, it enraged residents who now say they are being suffocated by strangers and their second-hand smoke.

(I understand them being angry about cigarette butt litter, but “suffocated” by someone smoking on the street? Hyperbole, anyone?)

Link

Berlin – A smoking ban that began Saturday on trains operated by Germany’s main railway company, Deutsche Bahn, may trigger a crisis, with toilets constantly occupied by surreptitious smokers, a passenger lobby warned Saturday.

“Heavy smokers will head for the toilets,” he said in an interview. “That is what happened when the smoking cars were abolished (on July 1) on regional trains. You have to accept that. It’s a fact whether you like it or not.”

Naumann predicted that about half the people who have used railway smoking cars to date would stop traveling by rail and go by road.

Link

MIDDLETOWN — It’s been eight months since a law went into effect banning smoking in most Ohio public indoor places. Some businesses say the ban has beefed up business, while others say it hurts.

At Jay’s Lakeside Inn on Tytus Avenue, not too many patrons were at the bar at 4 p.m. Tuesday.

“This bar used to be packed this time of day,” said owner Jimmy D. Valentine.

“Guys who used to come in and drink two or three bottles of beer, now they go home and drink,” he said.

Valentine blames the smoking ban for losing $4,000 a week. He’s cut positions and pay to keep his business afloat, he said.

{The article then tells how it appears to be good for a bowling alley. So this reporter found two whole businesses to report on. Wow, that’s some impressive reporting.}

Link

DISGRUNTLED pub landlords in Nuneaton are set to challenge the government over the new smoking laws.

They say the smoking ban is doing more harm than good – and is threatening Britain’s pub culture.

He said: “It is causing a mass of problems – noise, mess, glass and bottles on the street, crowds of people drinking outside pubs rather than inside, and many other issues.”He said: “Noise is a big problem, because the doors are onstantly open there’s noise from inside and outside the pub.

Mess on the streets is another problem.

Mr Burlingham said: “At least inside the pub you can keep emptying ashtrays to keep the place clean.

“When you go outside at the end of the night, it looks like all the ashtrays have been emptied in one place.”

He said pub landlords feel the ban is changing the British way of life.

“Where pubs have created designated smoking areas, people are being herded into one place to smoke – but non-smokers are joining them, leaving the pubs half empty.

“Like it or not, Britain has a pub culture.

Source: Coventry Telegraph. Link

The smoking ban has already produced some surprising consequences. Take smells. Tobacco smoke may have been unpleasant but it masked a myriad odours. Since the ban, hundreds of pubs have been forced to steam-clean carpets stiff with years of beer spillage and other deposits. Nightclubs are now pumping perfume into their air-conditioning systems to mask the body odour given off by dancers.

There is a topsy-turvy feeling to many British pubs today, with scores of people crowding outside while bar rooms lie empty – even in cool weather.

In Ireland, which pioneered the smoking ban, the effects were far worse. Hundreds of pubs closed, particularly in rural areas.

Some pubs have gone already. Deejay Royall spent thousands of pounds transforming the interior of The Bush, in Wigan. He decided to pre-empt the ban and steal a march on rivals by prohibiting smoking from February. The result was a catastrophic fall in customers.

“People started to go to other pubs that hadn’t introduced the smoking ban, and then, when it came in last month, they stopped going out altogether. They are staying at home, buying cheap booze from the supermarkets and sitting in with their friends, smoking their heads off.”

Paul Jones, the landlord of the New Inn in Lower Cwmtwrch, in south Wales is another victim. “I’ve sold my lease because I can’t continue,” he laments. “About 40 per cent of our trade was cut by the smoking ban.”

Unless smoking in the open air is banned, Britain had better get used to night-time crowds. Terry Archer, the manager of the Lamb and Flag in London’s Covent Garden, has no option but to let his customers drink on the street.

Source: Tellegraph UK. Link

SMOKERS who are forced to pop outside pubs for a puff because of the smoking ban could be breaking street drinking laws, it has been claimed.

The new ban has also created a nuisance for people living near town centre pubs, who have complained about groups of smokers congregating on the streets.

People living in the town’s historic core said their lives had been blighted by smokers noisily congregating outside neighboring pubs with drinks in hand, which could break street drinking laws.

Source: EADT. Link

The bingo industry generates billions of pounds in stake money, and employs 20,000 people throughout the UK. However, as the smoking ban in enclosed spaces is introduced, experts are predicting disaster, with up to one in three clubs facing possible closure.

In Scotland, 10 clubs have already closed down since the ban was enforced last April – and more are set to follow.

“The effect of the smoking ban in Scotland’s been a lot worse than we thought it was going to be,” says Neil Goulden, chief executive of Gala Bingo.

“We’ve actually now lost 8% of our customer base who have stopped coming altogether.”

“When you look at a loss of around 40% of your bottom line, that’s devastating, and I’m not sure as operators where we move from here,” Mr Lowe says.

Mr Lowe has already taken drastic measures by closing down two of his seven clubs, and he fears for the future.

Now, with less than six weeks to go before the smoking ban comes to England, the big companies are bracing themselves for closures.

Gala’s chief Mr Goulden predicts trouble ahead for the industry.

“We could have 200 bingo clubs closing. This could mean an enormous number of job losses and loss of amenity to local communities.”

Source: BBC News. Link

A 17-year-old student was burned with a home-made flame thrower during a horrifying four-hour torture ordeal, a court heard.

Aerosol cans of air freshener and furniture polish were squirted at Katy James and the jets set alight with a naked flame. She was attacked by a gang of teenagers at the flat they shared in Burcot Lane, Bromsgrove, after her smoking was blamed for Hayley Kirby’s miscarriage.

he violence was begun by Kirby who slapped Miss James, called her a whore and branded her a murderer.

Source: Bromsgrove Advertsier. Link

(I wonder how much of the thugs inspiration came from campaigns claiming that SHS kills. They obviously believed it.)

According to Travel Hawaii LLC, Hawaii’s tourism industry is in a slump, with overall January arrivals down nearly 6 percent from January 2006 and the lucrative Japanese market down over 12 percent. The decline comes on the heels of Hawaii’s strict new smoking ban, which went into effect in November, and some in the tourism industry wonder whether the smoking ban is chasing away a good portion of Hawaii’s traditional clientele.

Japan is considered a “smoker’s paradise” relative to the U.S., and some observers feel that the cigarette-puffing Japanese tourists are being deterred from visiting Hawaii, in favor of more smoker-friendly destinations. “We’ve had several Japanese clients with pre-paid bookings cancel their reservations because they couldn’t get a smoking room,” said Chris Freas, Sales Manager at Travel Hawaii, a Hawaii-based Internet retailer

Source: eNwesChannels. Link Expired

Lawyers for Colorado bar owners say the eight-week-old statewide smoking ban has devastated some smaller taverns, slashing their incomes by up to 80 percent.

In a court filing Friday, the lawyers also said the ban has triggered layoffs and caused fights among patrons who go outside to smoke.

The state also argues the Legislature had valid reasons for exempting casinos, including the 100 million dollars they generate for the state every year.

Source: kktv.com. Link

TWO leisure groups revealed yesterday that trading had been hit in Scotland since the implementation of the smoking ban last spring – with one confirming resulting job cuts.
Rank said it was cutting 200 jobs at its Mecca Bingo clubs across the UK and closing its London head office with the loss of 40 jobs as it reported a 3 per cent fall in underlying first-half profit.

Source: The Scotsman. Link expired.

Source: whns.com. Lansing,MI. Link Expired

“Owners are losing their businesses and people are losing jobs,” said Montreal bar owner Peter Sergakis, head of the Union des tenanciers de bars du Quebec.

In response to a poll conducted this summer, dozens of bar owners told his association they were going broke, Sergakis said.

The 1,500 bar owners who responded to the survey reported a 30-per-cent drop in revenues from alcohol sales, video-poker terminals, pool tables and food since the no-smoking rules went into effect May 31, Sergakis said.

At least 478 full- and part-time jobs have been cut, he added.

Bars outside major cities are hardest hit because their clientele is older and more likely to smoke, Sergakis said.

“Just wait for winter – the effect will be double,” he said. “People won’t want to go outside to smoke in minus 30C.”

Source: Montreal Gazette. Link

The surge in would-be quitters has brought windfalls for pharmacists and other retailers who have enjoyed massive surges in sales of nicotine replacement therapy products, including patches, chewing gums and inhalators, since July last year.

Market analysts Mintel say that £100m has already been spent on smoking cessation products this year, and the market will be worth £140m by 2011.

Asda has reported a 415 per cent rise in purchases of nicotine patches compared with July last year, and made five weeks’ worth of sales in 24 hours last Sunday when the ban came in. Also compared against sales figures for July last year, Sainsbury’s reported a 234 per cent increase and Tesco said sales had trebled.

Phil Wells, head of smoking cessation at Superdrug, where sales are up 400 per cent from July 2006, estimated that 2 million smokers were trying to give up a year ago, but said that figure had risen to 7.5 million.

He said 10,000 smokers a week were joining the store’s rewards programme, in which customers earn gift vouchers for repeated purchases of certain products.

Lloyds Pharmacy has doubled sales of stop-smoking products as well as bookings for its cessation clinics, which are run in conjunction with the NHS.

At Boots, sales have risen 195 per cent since July 2006. “We have experienced a significant growth in customers taking up the free smoking consultations with our trained pharmacists and health advisers since the ban came into force,” a spokesman said.

Other smokers have not reacted so positively to the ban – British Transport Police ticked off the former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy after he was spotted having a cigarette on the London-to- Plymouth express on Friday. He told officers he thought he was smoking legally as he was leaning out of the window.

A secret smoking den in the Palace of Westminster was rumbled on Thursday. Informing the Leader of the Commons, Harriet Harman, that the ban was already being abused, Betty Williams, Labour MP for Conwy, did not reveal who had been sneaking a crafty cigarette, or where. But as she finished, several MPs blurted out “in the Division toilets”.

And a man in North Yorkshire became the first to be locked up for flouting the ban when he lit up for a protest chain-smoke at his local pub, only to spend Monday night in the local police cells.

Police called to Riskers pub in Scarborough initially ordered 42-year-old decorator Martin Whisker to go home, but eventually arrested him. He was given an £80 fixed penalty for being drunk and disorderly. “I made my protest to make a point,” he said.

Pub owner Barry Risker said: “I can understand how he feels – I think it is a crazy ban. A police officer ended up taking a cigarette out of his mouth and stamping it on the floor. We had to tell him to stop smoking because otherwise I could be fined up to £2,500.”

Higher numbers of pub-goers standing outside on the pavement to smoke did not appear to have increased drunk and disorderly behaviour, although many police forces have warned smokers to be mindful of laws regarding drinking in public places and to keep the noise down.

Superintendent John Boshier, of Surrey Police, said: “We are not expecting the smoking ban to spark an increase in town centre violence. But for pub-goers who are now going outside to smoke, I’d ask them to bear in mind the local community, especially by keeping quieter at night, and to remember that glasses and bottles should not be taken on to the streets.”

A Cumbria police spokesman said: “We do not want to see increased disorder and noise nuisance from licensed premises. The basic rule for licensed premises is that there should be no smoking inside and no drinking outside, except in privately owned areas or beer gardens within areas covered by the premises’ licence.”

(Most lobbying for smoking bans is funded, quietly and behind the seines, by Big Pharma and their front groups, like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This story explains why. Bans result in huge sales increases for their very profitable, and mostly infective, smoking cessation products.)

Source: The Independent. Link

National drug companies often see a 30 percent to 50 percent spike in retail sales of nicotine patches and gum after a smoking ban goes into effect, said Jennifer May, a GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman in Pittsburgh.

(This is the real reason Big Pharma pushes for these bans (usually quietly, behind the scenes). It has nothing to do with improving health. It’s all about seeing very profitable, highly ineffective quit-smoking aids.)

Source: The Denver Post. Link Expired.

EVERETT, Wash.—Less than a dozen cars speckled the parking lot outside the White Elephant Bar and Grill on a recent Saturday night in this growing Seattle suburb. Inside, most booths and tables sat empty while two electronic dart boards hung unused on the side wall. A handful of customers encircled the restaurant’s lone pool table, sipping beers and conversing easily at normal volume levels. Owners John and Donna Kerns leaned on the end of a deserted bar and watched helplessly as their once buzzing establishment choked to a slow death on its clean, smoke-free air.

Six months ago, that hub teemed with activity, drawing several thousand people on any given weekend. Now, business is down more than 50 percent. The Kernses, both in their 60s, have laid off employees and significantly trimmed their hours of operation.

Source: World Magazine. Link

The Canadian Auto Workers union is asking the Ontario government to supplement the incomes of hospitality workers who are laid off because of the province’s smoking ban and to provide retraining for them.

The casino’s senior managers have told the union they are predicting at least a 30 per cent drop in business followed by layoffs, Lewenza told Pupatello in a letter.

Source: The Windsor Star. Link

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