Stopping the Bans
Cities and states today are in a better position to fight
the pressure for universal bans than either California or New York were for
several reasons.
First of all, there’s almost no one who still believes
“It can’t happen here.” The ban in
New York put a pretty solid end to that particular
mindset.
Second, the political tricks of the Antis have now become
public knowledge and restaurant, bar, and club owners now know that they have to
put their competition aside for a little while to fight a common enemy or else
they’re doomed.
Third, the wider public is beginning to finally wake up
to the danger of governmental over-regulation of our private lives and is
finally starting to see through the health-scare of secondary smoke. The truth about the actual findings of
the medical studies has begun to spread even without the financial backing for
press releases and fancy TV ads.
Fourth, and finally, the Antis haven’t supported their
rear guard well enough. Bans that
are supposedly solidly in place are unraveling as resistance mounts, courts
throw out or weaken bans and enforcement structures on Constitutional
grounds, bars find and exploit the
loopholes that existed in some of the less-sophisticated ban laws of the past
(e.g. Delaware’s herbal cigarette ploy) and as smokers begin resisting clearly
unreasonable rules.
Today’s legislators are more aware than most of their
predecessors who faced ban battles of just how shaky the health arguments of the
Antismokers are; they’re aware that the local hospitality industry and its
workers are strongly and solidly opposed to government-mandated bans; they’re
aware of the problems that have been faced by cities like New York that have had
entire neighborhoods disrupted as smokers party on the sidewalks outside of
bars; and they’re aware that the Antismokers’ threats of political doom for
ban-opponents are little more than paper tigers: most Americans do not want to see a New York type
situation in their cities and will not support any game-plan leading to
such.
HOW TO FIGHT:
So what do managers and owners of bars, restaurants, pool
and bingo halls, and private clubs need to do?
1) Show their unity in opposing
any level of government-mandated bans in the private hospitality sector. Customers and workers can always vote
with their feet, and acceptance of any level of mandated ban will always be followed by more. Unify through communication as well:
yahoo email groups have proven to be an extremely powerful tool for owners and
activists fighting bans: form a list and share email
addresses!
2) Raise money to develop and print
educational materials for their customers and neighbors so as to increase
awareness of both the lack of health-necessity for such bans and awareness of
the damage they will do. If you
believe that a smoking ban will rob you of 20% of your long term profits, how
can you rationally justify not investing two or three months’ worth of that 20%
into fighting a ban? Not every bar
and restaurant is going to do that of course, but every bar and restaurant
that’s worth its license will, and those that don’t will be
remembered.
3) Sponsor a formal survey of
workers and customers as to whether they would prefer a government mandated ban
or prefer the same simple
enforcement of OSHA safety standards that apply to all other work situations.
The Antismokers will have a survey of their own, carefully prepared, designed,
and worded to guarantee a figure of 70% in favor of “smoke-free workplaces,” but
you can counter that with a more fairly worded and administered survey of your
workers and customers… provided you have it ready in
time.
4) Make clear that, since there
is no real health based reason for government to come into their private
businesses and mandate a smoking ban, owners will not cooperate in acting as
unpaid government agents in enforcing any such ban. This lack of cooperation must be formal
and viewed in the same way that workers view a union call for work actions:
painful individually in terms of possible penalties but better for all in the
long run.
5) Immediately begin writing,
calling, yelling, and complaining to legislators about plans for an upcoming
ban. Do it yourselves and encourage
employees and customers to do it.
Provide paper and envelopes for your customers to use and address, and
stamp and mail them yourselves individually. Do not however pressure an employee to do
anything: one of the claims the Antismokers love to make is that workers only
oppose bans out of fear of firings, so don’t give them that
ammunition.
6) Remember to work on both the city and state levels. Antismokers have recently discovered a
powerful new tactic and they’re using it to the hilt in states like Minnesota,
Texas, and Pennsylvania: attack on the state level, and simultaneously attack in
a big city. The double attack
divides and distracts ban opponents and also allows the Antis to use the “level
playing field” argument from both ends: at the state level they plead how much
the city needs the support of the level playing field, and at the city level
they reassure business owners that the state will indeed provide them with such
a field.
7) Find out when hearings are
scheduled and demand formal speaking slots. The Smoking Prohibitionists have played
this game for years and will have the hearing set to showcase one Antismoking
“expert” and “mother with gasping child” after another to give the public the
impression that there’s a strong demand and need for government action. You’re a customer, a worker, or a
business owner: you should have equal status as an expert in your own field.
Meanwhile, demand that no paid representatives of the tobacco industry or
Antismoking organizations be allowed to speak. These hearings are for local citizens
and business owners, not for flown-in experts whose opinions are bought and paid
for. Ask what “panels” are going to
be set up and demand slots on them: don’t let yourself be relegated to the role
of a “private citizen” grudgingly allowed a two minute gripe to an empty room at
the tail end of a nine hour hearing after the TV cameras have left.
8) Show up early for the
hearings and be sure to get any passes necessary beforehand. Be right at the
doors when they open: the Antismoking groups will have their staffers and
volunteers on alert to crowd the hearing with supporters: make sure you do the
same with your staff and patrons.
If there are a thousand people who can’t get in the Council will know
they’re being watched and will have to answer for their actions at the
polls. Have educational handouts
ready and gather email names of supporters.
9) Don’t be shy about flaunting
credentials. James Repace
masqueraded as a “Health Physicist” for years when he had little more than a
general Masters in Physics. “Dr.”
Stanton Glantz preaches on TV and
in articles about the “health threat” of secondary smoke while never mentioning
that his doctorate is in mechanical engineering. Both Repace and Glantz now have
university positions with medical tags on them, but in both cases the key to
that door had the strong smell of millions of dollars in grant money.
If you have a customer or worker who’s got a degree or a
claim to experiential knowledge make sure it’s noted when preparing for
testimony: a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology or a bartending record of 20 years
makes someone more qualified to testify on the social disruption of smoking bans
than Glantz’ degree in mechanical engineering makes him qualified to testify on
epidemiological studies!
10)
Remember: the Antismokers’
greatest weakness is in their lies.
For the past thirty years they’ve pushed for smoking bans on the basis of
the supposed threat secondary smoke poses to the nonsmokers around the
smokers. You’ve seen here that that
basis is a lie. Read more about the
facts concerning secondary smoke and attack and expose the lies and financial
motivations of Antismokers at every opportunity: Smoking Prohibitionists are
angels with very dirty feet… make
sure you pull up their robes.
By far the biggest and most important thing any owner or
manager of a bar, restaurant, club, bingo hall, pool hall, or bowling alley can
do at this point is simply be willing to work with everyone else and present a
unified front to the politicians and to those attacking your businesses. You don’t necessarily need to work
through whatever general industry trade groups are already established either: a
group established and designed specifically for this fight may well have more
energy, focus, and latitude in the scope of actions it can take than an
established group with old ties, obligations, and responsibilities.
As Ben Franklin said, “Gentlemen, we must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall
all hang separately." In the case of fighting
smoking bans truer words were never spoken.
Whatever plans are agreed on, whoever is chosen to host
meetings or make representations to the media or foot the bills, whether it’s a
business that’s been cutting your throat for the last five years or not, you’ve
got to work together or all is lost.
Bars, Restaurants, Bingo Halls and Bowling Alleys have to work together
or they’ll die one by one. The
Antismokers know this game. They’ve
been playing it successfully for over 30 years, one small step at a time, and
nowadays they do it with multimillion dollar international conferences and
five-year plans laying out their future strategies of attack. The organizers of the Prohibitionist
forces in your city have millions of dollars of training and propaganda
materials backing them up. As
business owners you’re definitely the amateurs in this particular fight and your
only hope is to hang
together.
With only a few notable exceptions, the “lawsuit” and the
“lobbying” approaches to fighting bans in other states have failed. I urge you
to take the direct route to your legislators and your customers. Educate them about the lies and scams
being used to push a ban, let them see your anger, and get them angry about the misuse of tax
money and political chicanery to influence legislation impacting private lives
and businesses. If all else fails
and they proceed to push a ban, insist that the city or state be held
responsible for your losses: remember, a ban does not have a legitimate basis in public
health other than as a social engineering tool: As private businesses and
organizations you should not be held financially responsible for other people’s
Utopian social experiments.
And finally, if a ban does somehow get passed, act as a
union: adopt a uniform policy of resistance, refuse to accept involuntary
servitude as unpaid and untrained police for the state (particularly important
for waitpeople who are minors and might be in harm’s way), share the penalties
for defiance, and if necessary go on strike as an industry and see how long the
government will resist. You’ll lose less in a week of shut down than you will in
a month of a smoking ban, and the angry outcry of their constituents would be
beyond anything the politicians have ever experienced.
It is said that when the British came into India with
machine guns to force the natives to spin silk, Gandhi rallied his people and
reminded them that the British really had no power over them. The British could not spin silk
with machine guns: all they could do was shoot people. If they wanted silk they needed an
agreement.
The government can not run the bars and taverns and halls
and clubs in your city. Only their
owners can.
In the final analysis
what happens is only up to
you.
Copyright
2005
Michael J.
McFadden
Author of
Dissecting Antismokers’
Brains
Cantiloper@aol.com
http://cantiloper.tripod.com
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