[Mpls] Candidates who Question or Equivocate on Smoking Ban are Defeated?

[Andy Driscoll]

Bars in Ramsey County (St. Paul has no separate smoking ban‹yet) are indeed
fudging the numbers. And about 200 of them or more have received waivers
even though many are serving more food than liquor by volume, if not by
revenue or sales tax payments. Some have timed smoking (Tavern on Grand
starts allowing smoking after 10PM when the food sales have dropped and only
the drinkers hang out), some have spent the bucks to try sealing off the bar
from the restaurant (like Fern's), and the walls simply don't work (from
several sources‹I won't go in there), and others simply lie about their
sales figures. Not all. Most small neighborhood bars probably do have higher
alcohol sales because their food selection is so meager and the booze
profits so high.

As for Billy's, Bill Wengler, the owner, has long had a great system for
increasing alcohol sales: Lousy food service. It takes a half-hour to place
your order and another 45 minutes to get it. That's why the four beers with
every nachos order.

This really getting stupid. Today's MPR show on the ban had Mark Stenglein
turning the English language into a pretzel justifying his attempts at
reversing the Hennepin County Board's ban for bars worth 50% or more in
alcohol sales. Asked three times by Kerri Miller whether the fact that a few
bars might suffer, even go out of business, wasn't that often the cost of
public health initiatives and other laws through the years anyway; and,
therefore, in the larger scheme of things, more tolerable than the dangers
posed by smoking, Stenglein repeated almost verbatim, "We're not telling
these bars they have to allow smoking; we're leaving it up to the individual
owner."

Now, if ever twisted logic had been employed in support of an unpopular
position, this Stenglein character had rehearsed this one to a T. What
nonsense.

Another pearl: "Hey, if we're going to ban smoking in bars why do we allow
smokers to smoke at home or in cars with their kids present, huh? Huh?

The fact is, and Stenglein finally settled on this truism: this is about
"private property" vs. "public accountability" and "public health."
Libertarianism vs. community accountability. It has everything to do with
the whole idea of telling a business owner he/she can't do something with
their business, no matter how dangerous or destructive it is versus his/her
responsibility for the health of their customers and employees, many of them
unwitting victims of what that air is doing to them.

I'm sure many restaurateurs argued over state and city imposition of health
measures in their kitchens, bathrooms and storage areas when they were
passed...in 1875 or some such. But that's is what a society does. It allows
retail operations to open themselves to anyone seeking their products or
services by requiring them to protect the public health as they pursue their
enterprises and profits.

Ninety-nine per cent of these bars will survive, albeit with less alcohol
money spent by dry-throated smokers poisoning the air and the lungs of wait
staff, bartenders and customers. If they go out of business, better that
than killing people slowly or quickly with second-hand smoke.

But we should not be protecting individual bar businesses with public health
policy. Period.

Andy Driscoll
Saint Paul
--
on 11/16/05 2:27 PM, freealonzo at mn.rr.com wrote:

> Mr. Surmak's argument would be stronger if it wasn't for the fact that
> the St. Paul Ban didn't even stop smoking in 50 percent of the drinking
> establishments in St. Paul.  There are a lot more than a "small number
> of bars" open to smoking.  Plus, although I have no proof, I am
> guessing some of the bars are playing fast and loose with their alcohol
> v. food sales as I can't for the life of me figure out how Billy's Bar
> on Grand Avenue can get by as a "smoking bar."
> 
> Dean E. Carlson
> East Harriet, Ward 10

>> From: Psurmak at aol.com
>> 
>> The smoking ban dynamics are not hard to figure out....80% of voting
>> adults in Minnesota don't smoke, and are most likely to support a
>> complete ban and resist any attempts to revisit the issue.  Personally,
>> I think a total ban  on smoking is a crock and a violation of privacy
>> rights; I think the partial ban  in St. Paul is reasonable, with a
>> small number of "bars" still open to the  smoking public.  These
>> establishments are far fewer in number than their  non-smoking
>> counterparts, and offer the remaining 20% an option, albeit a  limited
>> one.  Anyone who doesn't want to sit in a smoky environment can  stay
>> away; people who don't want to work in this environment will have a
>> wide selection of non-smoking food/beverage establishments to work in
>> (the  idea that a handful of smoking bars will discriminate or restrict
>> anyone's  employment opportunities in this town is just plain stupid).
>> I think this  compromise is very reasonable, and hope St Paul's policy
>> doesn't change, and  Minneapolis/Hennepin Co. revisit their restrictive
>> policy.  
>> 
>> Peter  Surmak
>> Linden Hills