The cafe owners want the ban, which came into force on July 1, scrapped arguing they have neither the space nor the money to build specially-ventilated smoking areas.

Source: AFP. Link

Even the government accepts the legislation has had a huge impact on trade and is allowing bars to claim business rate reductions.

The ban is often cited as one of the prime factors killing pubs - and now a campaign has been launched in Suffolk to try to amend the law.

Jim Adams is behind the bid and is urging regulars at pubs all over the country to sign a petition.

“The smoking ban should be replaced with a rule that would require all public houses to have a room set aside for smokers instead of the really stupid overall ban,” said Mr Adams, who runs Jim and Donna’s Barbers in Hamilton Road, Felixstowe.

“The ban is killing the pub trade and removing from the English way of life one of the most sought after features for tourists coming here. There is no justifiable reason to stop those who wish to smoke from so doing.

“If there is another part of the pub which is a smoking area then the folk who wish to smoke may so do, and those who want a smoke-free area may have the rest of the establishment - including the food area - to themselves.”

The Evening Star is highlighting the loss of pubs in the area - more than 100 have closed in living memory - and the threat many are now facing to their future.

Kate Nicholls, head of communications at the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR), which represents pubs and bars, said: “Last summer’s bad weather and the smoking ban were to blame for a number of closures.

“People are not going to want to stand outside and smoke when the weather is unpleasant and with extremely cheap supermarket drink deals available. It just gives people a reason to stay home.”

Source: Evening Star.  Link

Nationwide and around the world the loss of businesses and jobs after smoking bans are implemented is staggering. Even though air quality testing by organizations like the American Cancer Society, Johns Hopkins, a Minnesota Environmental Health Department, British Medical Journal published contributors prove that secondhand smoke levels are 15 - 25,000 times SAFER than OSHA permissible exposure limits (PEL).

Meanwhile Nicoderm manufacturer Johnson & Johnson Company, whose private foundation RWJF funds the smoking ban movement, saw 40% 1st quarter 2008 revenue growth over their previous year.

Currently, smoking cessation product sales just in the U.S. accounts for $500 million, but thanks to rent seeking smoking ban legislation; industry insiders expect those sales to climb to $4.6 billion annually by 2016.

Source: Casino Gambeling Web.  Link.

The owner, Rich Marx, said the smoking ban drove him out of business.

“We just celebrated our 10 year anniversary last Wednesday and then shut the doors three days later,” Marx said.

“Since the smoking ban went into effect July 1, we’ve lost just over 40 percent of our business,” he said.

Source: KCCI.  Link.

Dombrowski has received two calls from Gulfport police, warning him that smoking inside Skeeters is illegal. But if he obeys the law, he says his Gulfport business could close.

In the first three months after smoking was banned, his restaurant revenues dropped more than 30%. So, in August, he started to look the other way when people wanted to smoke. By October, he put out ashtrays.

Source: WLOX-TV.  Link.

“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.

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.

“About 40 per cent of loyal customers are smokers, and that is why we have an outside seating area, but now with the ban, there is no point to have .outside dining at the restaurant,” he said.

Source: BruneiDriect.com. Link

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

In hotels last month, poker machine turnover was down nearly twenty percent. Millions of dollars are being lost, and some casino operators are blaming the smoking ban, yet other believe there are more
factors at play.

“There is growing evidence that the continuing drop in revenue is not related just to the indoor bans. With petrol prices up substantially this year and several more interest rate increases announced, households are clearly reducing how much they gamble,” said Chief Executive of Clubs NSW, David Costello.

The weather last month also has taken some of the blame from club owners. When it rains heavy like it did last month, smokers are less inclined to go out knowing they will have to go outside in the rain to smoke.

Compared to last year’s March numbers, the numbers are drastically down. In hotels, poker machine turnover is down nineteen percent. Clubs saw a decrease of eleven percent from last year in the same month.

Source: Casino Gambling Web. Link

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

“I can get eight cans for a fiver, so I stay at home more now. I think the ban is a negative thing, there will be no pubs left here soon. I can’t see how they will survive. It’s against human rights,” he said.

However, 31-year-old Rebecca, also a smoker, doesn’t mind the ban, and prefers eating out in smoke-free pubs.

She said: “It’s a better environment for people to eat, especially for the little ones.

“But I do think it’s bad in a business sense. I work across the road from a pub and they have been dead since the ban.”

Source: Wales Online. Link

“The time has come to take this step,” Cates said. “Why? Because this measure is hurting business in Ohio.”

The Moose Family Center has experienced a dramatic drop in business, which management blames on the smoking ban.

Revenue for the lodge is down at least 60 percent since the ban, said Larry Turner, govenor of the lodge. To be successful, they need to bring in about $28,000 a week; last week they brought in $16,000, Turner said.

Turner dismisses claims from the American Cancer Society and other pro-smoking ban groups that have said more customers would be attracted to places where smoking is banned.

“It’s a damn lie. It’s not happening. You can’t find that anywhere in Ohio,” Turner said.

“The law ensures that all business will operate on a level playing field with one fair, statewide standard that is easy to enforce. Furthermore, the intent of the law—to protect all workers from secondhand smoke— was clearly communicated to Ohio voters,” [American Cancer Society Nanny] Hoctor said.

(Ah yes, the famous, favorite line of the nannies, a level playing field. They still haven’t figured out their constant use of the phrase reveals the lie of bans being good for business. If they were, there would be no need for their cherished “level playing field.”)

Source: Cincinnati.com. Link

But 17 pubs said trade had fallen because of the ban, in many cases by 20 per cent or more.

Since the start of the year, several pubs - including the Oddfellows
Arms, in Pocklington, and The Phoenix, in George Street, York, have
closed.

Alan Jackson, who has been landlord of the Edward VII in Nunnery Lane,
York, for about five years, said he believed his trade was down by
between 25 and 30 per cent because of the ban.

Source: The Press.  Link.

the French are prefer to stay home and host house parties. A whopping twenty percent of the 200,000 bars in the nation have been closed down. It is stated that 40,000 bars have been shut down since the onset of the smoking ban. The public is choosing to stay at home, smoke and have fun at house parties as the newly preferred style of night life.

Sabah.com Link.

The Chapel Street club is being forced to sell of land around it because of financial problems and last week staff hours were reduced and heating regulated in a bid to cut costs.

Secretary Jimmy Langley said the smoking ban kept smokers and non-smokers away.

He said: “Since the smoking ban we have been fighting closure. The non-smokers have been denied the right to a social pint or two without smelling like an ashtray, but when the numbers dropped, many non-smokers stopped coming in because of the lack of atmosphere. If this goes, the village has had it.”

Mr Langley said the club had been on the site since 1927, when it was a Miners’ Welfare and had been central to village life.

Source: Times and Star, UK.  Link

Punch Taverns
Britain’s largest landlord has had a rotten year. Its shares have collapsed by 70% as beer sales fell 10% with total like for like sales 3% worse and halfyear profits down 20%. Falling volumes and customer numbers have come at a time of rising energy and food costs.

Enterprise Inns
The sprawling tenanted and leased pubs chain includes many thousands of country locals, which have had to work harder to repair the trade of the lost bar-propping smoker. Its shares have fallen 35% in a year - not as much as others because of a likely change in tax status to a real estate which will boost to shareholder dividend payments. Latest reports talk of an upturn in trade, though profits have been falling more than 10%.

Marston’s
Best known for its Pedigree bitter, its pubs include some stalwarts of the City as well as the Pitcher & Piano chain. With the shares more than halved in a year and the latest figures showing profits down by almost 20%, ‘resilient’ was the best that chief executive Ralph Findlay could come up with when comparing his bars with the competition.

JD Wetherspoon
Its shares have cratered 60% since the fag ban, despite it leading the way by banning smoking in much of its estate even before it had to.

Shopping mall managers say the sharp fall in turnover was mainly caused by eateries located outside shopping malls, where the ban on smoking will not go into effect until next year. Smokers who spend their time in shopping malls walk out to nearby restaurants that offer a smoke-friendly alternative, a situation mall managers say creates unfair competition. Managers demand that the smoking ban in all restaurants and cafés, scheduled to take effect on July 19, 2009, should either be moved up to an earlier date or their eateries should be excluded from the indoor smoking ban until that date.

{This is fairly typical behavior.  When bans hurt one sector but not another, the injured parties often demand that the pain be spread around in the interest of “fairness.”} 

Source: Today’s Zaman.  Link

“I have seen business drop way down - up to 30%,” said Chada.

Source: News 5, KHAS TV.  Link

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

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.

Councilman Tom Didier, R-3rd, disagrees with his former colleague. Didier, who sells food to restaurants and bars, said he’s seen how the ban has hurt mom-and-pop places throughout the city.

“It’s been difficult,” he said. “There are still customers today that are hurting.”

Source: Journalgazette.net. Link

Colorado casino revenues in April fell for the fourth straight month since the smoking ban took effect in January, dropping 7.1 percent from March and down 12.5 percent from April, 2007.

It was the second-biggest year-to-year decrease ever, behind March.

In Cripple Creek, revenue fell 6.4 percent to $10.7 million in April, off 13.3 percent from
April, 2007.

Cripple Creek casinos have brought in a total of $42.6 million in 2008, off 14.7 percent from this point in 2007.

Source: The Gazette. Link