Bars say it's 'good business' to ignore smoking bans
12/6/09
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
CHICAGO — Smoking in bars has been banned here since Jan. 1, 2008, but Crow Bar, a cozy spot on the city's far southeast side, is still a haven for people who want to light up.
Unless other customers object, owner Pat Carroll usually allows smoking. He keeps a "smoke jug" in view for $5 donations to offset fines.
"It's good business to allow smoking. It's a free country," says Carroll, owner of Crow Bar for 28 years. It's near the border with Indiana, which allows smoking in bars. He says his customers would patronize bars there if he forced them to smoke outside.
After inspectors found a souvenir ashtray behind the bar, Carroll, a smoker, paid a $340 fine. Repeat violations would mean bigger fines, which he says would make him rethink his leniency.
Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia have passed smoking bans that cover restaurants and bars, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids says. Four others ban smoking in restaurants but exempt stand-alone bars.
Most inspections and citations stem from complaints, and "non-compliance is a fairly isolated issue," says Danny McGoldrick, the group's vice president for research. "Business owners and patrons are pretty law-abiding."
Not all of them:
• Owner Judy Maxie lets customers smoke at Caddy's Lounge in Midlothian, Va., despite a law that took effect Dec. 1 and requires restaurants to allow smoking only in separately ventilated rooms.
"It's my business, and the government is not going to tell me what to do," she says.
The $25 fine is cheaper than the revenue she'd lose if she barred smoking, she says.
• Bill Comerford, owner of three Honolulu bars, tried unsuccessfully to get bars exempted from that state's ban. When customers light up, he and his staff remind them that smoking isn't allowed — but that's all they do.
"It's my business to inform the customer of the law," he says. "It's not my business to enforce the law."
• SmokeChoke.com collects readers' reports of places in Ohio that violate that state's ban. It includes more than 500 reports.
Opponents of smoking bans try novel ways to overturn them. In St. Louis, Bill Hannegan is challenging a ban set to take effect there in January 2011 by arguing that an exemption for casinos violates the state constitution. It is, he says, "very difficult to fight" foes of smoking.
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Covert smoking ban promoter RWJF president, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, is on list of visitors to Obama White House

October 31, 2009

The White House on Friday released a small list of visitors to the White House since President Barack Obama took office in January, including lobbyists, business executives, activists and celebrities.

Only about 110 names —and 481 visits —out of the hundreds of thousands who have visited the Obama White House were made public.

Advocates and nonprofit leaders include National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is interested in health policy......

The irony of course is, or should be, that RWJF policies (funding smoking ban efforts) have eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs.....something the White House claims they are trying to reverse. Now with J & J pharmaceutical and medical device maker's partner RWJF pushing government healthcare reform, job losses in the health insurance and private healthcare industry should also be anticipated.

Checking the White House visitor list you'll see that RWJF President Risa Lavizzo-Mourey has presented her special interest agenda to the White House 7 times thus far.
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Obama Says He Still Smokes Occasionally
October 10, 2008

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has waged a very public battle to quit smoking, and while he has cut down considerably, he hasn't quite broken away from nicotine completely.

The Associated Press reported Oct. 7 that Obama said in an interview with Men's Health magazine that he has bummed a cigarette from time to time during the campaign. "But I figure, seeing as I'm running for president, I need to cut myself a little slack," he said.

Obama said that he never smoked more than seven or eight cigarettes per day, so he didn't have to deal with serious withdrawal when he decided to quit. His advice for others trying to kick the habit: "Eliminate certain key connections -- that first cigarette in the morning, or after a meal, or with a drink. If you can eliminate those triggers, that should help."
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Leader of the Pack

June 17, 2008
By TONY HORWITZ

Vineyard Haven, Mass.

AS the Democratic primaries revealed, Barack Obama is having a hard time winning the support of blue-collar voters.

So here’s a piece of strategic advice for the candidate: Lose the Nicorette. Light up instead.

Consider these statistics, culled from studies of smoking patterns.
Americans who make between $24,000 and $36,000 a year smoke at twice the rate of those earning $90,000 or more. The same applies to Americans with a high-school education rather than a college degree. Rural Americans smoke more than city-dwellers. As for race, there’s a close correlation between states with high rates of white smokers and those where Mr. Obama polled worst in the primaries. Leading the pack of smoking states are Kentucky and West Virginia; industrial states like Ohio aren’t far behind.

Bottom line: small-towners in the Rust Belt and Appalachia don’t cling to guns and religion so much as they do cigarettes.

By rejoining them, Mr. Obama would also touch voters in several heavy-smoking swing states: Michigan, Missouri and Nevada. Added bonus — Virginia and North Carolina, two leading tobacco-producing states, are both in play this election.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I’m an Obama supporter and fellow Nicorette chewer. Thanks to the gum, I no longer crave cigarettes. But I do miss the companionship of a shared smoke.
Indulging in a vice stigmatized by most Americans is an easy way to bond with people with whom you otherwise have nothing in common.

This aspect of smoking would be of help to Mr. Obama, too. I suspect the discomfort some Americans feel about him has less to do with race than style. He can seem aloof, over-groomed and fussy about eating the right foods and getting enough exercise. Bumming a smoke on the rope line, soiling the sleeve of his pristine suit with cigarette ash and interrupting the flow of his soaring oratory with a smoker’s hack would go a long way toward dispelling his effete image.

It would also help his wife, Michelle, who made him quit smoking at the start of the campaign. She’s going through a rough patch right now as Republicans try to paint her as un-American. If her husband backslides and starts smoking again, Mrs. Obama could assume a more familiar role:
beleaguered and betrayed spouse who can’t reform her wayward, weak-willed husband.

The Obama campaign could also spin his smoking as a belt-tightening measure in tough economic times. Nicorette gum costs about 50 cents a piece, roughly twice the price of a cigarette, depending what state you’
re in. Smoking can even be cast as a patriotic act, akin to a flag pin.
Tobacco goes deeper in our history than any other crop. Native Americans harvested it for centuries before Europeans arrived, and cultivation of tobacco ensured the survival and prosperity of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony on this continent. Without the weed, Jamestown might well have failed, leaving this land to be settled by wicked Spanish or perfidious French.

Of course, Mr. Obama can’t smoke just any cigarette. Like everything in a campaign, his choice requires stagecraft. Clearly, a Dunhill or (quelle horreur!) a Gaulois would be disastrous. American Spirit has the right ring but the wrong demographic: young hipsters. Nor should the candidate bum Newports or Kools, brands traditionally favored by African-Americans.

To capture voters in coal country and smokestack towns, he needs an old-fashioned coffin nail. Unfiltered Camels come to mind, except Joe Camel has been tarred as a come-on to children. Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch — a slogan better suited to bruised Clinton supporters. And Marlboro, reported to be Mr. Obama’s brand before he quit, evokes the wide open spaces and low-electoral-vote country of Montana or Wyoming.

So my choice would be Winston, which was the longtime sponsor of Nascar.
Or, perhaps, Mr. Obama could take up smokeless tobacco. I’m sure the campaign can poll this kind of thing.

As for voters who might object, the highest rates of nonsmokers live in solidly red states like Utah, or in safely Democratic ones like Massachusetts, where I sit at this moment working my Nicorette. I can’t kick the gum, but, Mr. Obama, yes you can.

Tony Horwitz is the author, most recently, of “A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World.”
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Tobacco Controls Spreading, Anti-Smoking Groups Say

March 11, 2008
By Matt Purple, CNSNews.com Correspondent

(CNSNews.com) - The desire for tobacco control in America is rapidly accelerating, despite the best efforts of tobacco companies and conservative critics, according to several anti-smoking activists.

In Wisconsin, legislators are mulling over banning smoking in workplaces. In Illinois, such a ban took place at the beginning of this year, with no exceptions for any businesses. Even in conservative Texas, 18 cities have voted to prohibit tobacco in public locations.

"We think it's going to be a big year for our issues," Peter Fisher, a vice president for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told Cybercast News Service.

Anti-tobacco legislation, once the province of coastal cities like San Francisco and New York, has spread to the heartland and seems wildly popular among even conservative state legislatures and city councils.

Fisher pointed to the Nebraska State Legislature, which recently passed a ban on smoking in public businesses. The bill will now be considered by Gov. Dave Heinemann.

"We're at the tipping point with public smoking," Patrick Reynolds, president of the Foundation for a Smoke Free America, told Cybercast News Service.

According to Reynolds, 23 states currently have laws prohibiting smoking in bars and restaurants, and 21 of those bans have been passed over the past six years.

"The support for smoke-free laws has been overwhelming," Annie Tergen of Americans for Non-Smokers Rights, told Cybercast News Service. "Right now, almost 60 percent of the American population lives in a city or state with a strong smoke-free law. A decade ago, this was far more uncommon."

Meanwhile, 43 states have raised tobacco taxes over the past six years - and 10 have done it twice. In New York City, the combined state and local tax burden amounts to $3 per pack of cigarettes.

It's bad news for smokers and for citizens who support an individual's right to smoke.

"Once a majority of the country became non-smoking - which happened somewhere in the '90s - then politicians pick up on that and begin to feel morally superior to smokers," Peter van Doren, a senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute, told Cybercast News Service. "It's a recipe to get government to do stuff, but it doesn't mean it's right."

Van Doren said tobacco control was a perfect example of minority rights becoming co-opted by those of the majority.

"Once majorities come out opposed to other people's bad behavior ... there's not much that holds them in check," he said.

Anti-tobacco activists said they have had the most success at the state and local levels, although tobacco control was also gaining ground in the federal government.

"At the federal level, we have significant co-sponsorship and federal support for passing FDA control over tobacco," Dan Smith, president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, told Cybercast News Service . "This is something that we in the tobacco community have wanted for many years."

Smith attributed the groundswell of support for anti-tobacco legislation to changing social norms that find smoking to be increasingly unacceptable.

"You go into a bar and restaurant and you expect it now to be smoke-free. And I would say five or 10 years ago that was not the case," he said.

"No one's arguing about the science anymore," Tergen said. "We know that second-hand smoke kills people and it's extremely dangerous for people, especially in smoky workplaces."

The perception that second-hand smoke kills people is precisely the problem, according to smokers' rights advocates.

Gary Nolan, united regional director of the Smokers Club, told Cybercast News Service that the use of allegedly fraudulent second-hand smoke statistics had hoodwinked the public into supporting tobacco bans and taxes.

"You tell a lie long enough, as the old Nazi saying goes, and people will believe it," he said.

Nolan pointed to an oft-cited study in Helena, Mont., which allegedly found that a smoking ban reduced heart attack rates. He said the results failed to support that conclusion and that researchers took into account every heart attack case rather than just those of smokers.

Despite their success, anti-smoking activists said there was plenty of work to be done. They pointed to state tobacco education programs, which they say have not been funded appropriately.

"The future is a smoke-free country where in public places, you can go and it's smoke free," Smith said. "I also think the future is much higher taxes on tobacco products."
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Video: Presidential Hopefuls Talking Smoking Bans?
November 27th, 2007
As the 2008 Presidential election gears up, some candidates are weighing in on an issue that could affect cigar smokers in a big way: a national smoking ban.
Leading Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, along with a majority of their Democratic peers, have already pledged to sign a national smoking ban for “public places” (by which they mean any space where the public is welcome, even if it is actually owned by a private citizen). Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, known for increasing tobacco taxes as governor of Arkansas, has also pledged to sign and push for a national ban.
But other than Huckabee, we haven’t seen much from the Republican candidates about smoking bans. It isn’t hard to imagine that Congressman Ron Paul – known as “Dr. No” for his votes against any federal law not explicitly authorized by the Constitution – is a strong opponent of smoking bans.
Talk on this important issue has been lacking so far in the campaign, but we’re hoping that changes tomorrow night at the CNN/YouTube debate where questions are submitted by anyone with a webcam.
Ultimately, while I’d like to see more in-depth talk about these senseless bans, the following question, submitted by a YouTuber from Minnesota, would be a good start:  http://www.youtube.com/v/iQSF4KQiDys&

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Anti-tobacco stance might cost Democrats

Oct 12, 2007
By Norman E. Kjono

    In “Keeping Clinton at a Distance,” Noam M. Levey of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus may be entering treacherous territory with his 2008 bid for a fifth term in the U.S. Senate. Levy reports that “Despite recent gains by Democrats in the Rocky Mountain West, party officials across the region are anxious that their congressional candidates might get dragged under by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign.”

    Western states constituents tend to be self-reliant folks who live the spirit of free enterprise. It appears that the more western voters know about Democrat’s current frontrunner for the presidential nomination the faster they run from her and the Democrat party.

    Hillary Clinton is certainly a polarizing candidate, however, the reasons for Baucus to be deeply concerned extend beyond one candidate.

    All eight Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination supported expanding smoking bans during the New Hampshire debate. Clinton stated in April 1993 that she does not believe people should be permitted to smoke and banned smoking in the White House.

    Democrats don’t get it about the impact of smoking bans on bar and tavern revenues. That’s been borne out by data about Colorado’s ban on indoor smoking. A sharp reversal of bar revenue increases during six previous quarters occurs after Colorado’s smoking ban. Smoking bans tilt the nicotine market to “smoke free” pharmaceutical nicotine patch and gum distributors. Voters get it: Democrats steal the future of small bar and tavern owners through mandates that reward pharmaceutical interests.

    Increases in full service restaurant revenues after the Colorado smoking ban show that, absent the choice to enjoy a smoke with their beverage, bar patrons are migrating to restaurants, creating a change in the competitive structure of the hospitality industry. The vast majority of Colorado bar and tavern licensees are mom-and-pop neighborhood establishments and the majority of Colorado restaurants are chain franchises. The smoking ban becomes a transfer of wealth from local small business owners to big franchises. Voters get it: Democrats reward big corporate interests and do so at the expense of local mom-and-pop small business owners.

    What small business owner or employee would vote for a candidate who supports public policy that steals their economic future, while causing an artificial change in the competitive structure of their industry? What bar patron who smokes while enjoying a beer in a neighborhood tavern would vote for a candidate who throws them out the door along with the anti-tobacco bathwater? Voters increasingly get it: Democrats as lead by Hillary Clinton are the embodiment anticompetitive special-interest agendas — everyday folks, plus the mom-and-pop neighborhood hospitality establishments that cater to them, be damned.

    On Oct. 2, President Bush vetoed an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program passed by Democrats. It was the right thing to do for several reasons. The $35 billion expansion of federal payment obligations is financed by a 61-cent per pack increase in cigarette taxes. This tax would fall hardest on middle- and lower-income people. The new children’s insurance revenues would also vastly expand revenues for pharmaceuticals because those dollars also fund purchase of more prescription drugs. Voters get it: Democrats pick the pockets of their middle and lower income constituents to add billions to pharmaceutical sales.

    Targeted tobacco consumers, 45 million strong, are fed up with being the designated ATM for politicians’ mercantile social experiments. All taxpayers — smokers and nonsmokers alike — will ultimately fund expansion of children’s health insurance if the 110th Congress passes U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco. That current bill before Congress authorizes sharp reductions in the nicotine content of cigarettes, thereby strongly tilting the nicotine market to zero-taxed pharmaceutical nicotine patches, gums and inhalers. All taxpayers will be taxed to make up for the lost cigarette tax revenue. Voters get it: today’s taxes on smokers are tomorrow’s stealth tax increases for everyone.

    Perhaps Baucus merely understands the degree to which many Democratic politicians will loot their own constituents to throw billions at pharmaceuticals. He is, however, quite correct to anticipate a strong backlash from voters.

    Kjono is a columnist for Forces.org.
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HILL EYES NATIONAL CIG CURB
August 28, 2007
By GEOFF EARLE Post Correspondent
WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton lavished praise on New York City's tough anti-smoking laws yesterday - and said she supports smoking bans in public places across the country.
Asked at an Iowa forum on cancer whether banning smoking in public places would be good for America, Clinton replied, "Well, personally, I think so. And that's what a lot of local communities and states are starting to do."
Clinton noted that when New York's smoking ban was being considered, critics claimed, "Oh, that's the end of, you know, the bars and restaurants in New York City."
But she boasted, "We are now having more business than ever before, because a lot of people who stayed away from going out are now going out again, because they feel like they can enjoy their time outside."
Asked whether the feds should impose a nationwide ban, Clinton deferred to local governments.
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Mike Bloomberg acts like a candidate but insists he's not.
August 29, 2007
Bloomberg, who has stoked speculation about a 2008 run by switching his party affiliation from Republican to independent and allowing his aides to continue to tout his prospects, laid out his proposals to reduce poverty. Among them was changing the earned-income tax credit, which provides tax credits to low-income workers, by raising the ceiling by which workers can qualify for the credit from $12,000 a year to $18,000.
He also said it is important in reforming health care to realize that "there is no free lunch," called for higher mileage standards for cars, talked about the struggles of carmakers in Detroit ("You can't fight the marketplace"), and said that while he wouldn't call for a nationwide ban on smoking in public places like the one he pushed through in New York, "it would be great if America did it." He was particularly exercised about immigration, not only calling anti-immigration rhetoric in the past few months "damaging" but also saying that "the economic health of this country is based on a constant influx of immigrants."
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NANNY-IN-CHIEF
“Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., told a 2008 presidential candidates' forum on cancer Monday that he would favor a nationwide federal ban on smoking in public places.”
- San Francisco Chronicle, 8/29/07

THE NANNY
"At a Lance Armstrong 'LiveStrong' forum in Iowa, (GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee) called for a nationwide ban on smoking in public places.  Mr. Huckabee's populist streak as well as his fondness for government intervention on certain, mostly health-related issues is no secret to voters in Arkansas, where he served two successful terms and became a famous anti-obesity crusader after shedding 110 pounds. It's also the kind of nanny-statism that Republican base voters usually detest."
- Blake Dvorak, Political Diary, 8/30/07

The New York Post and CNN.com have provided us with a perfect example of how the news gets twisted by the media to support smoking bans.
 
The antismoking lobby has long regarded Hillary Clinton as their saint in heaven - the woman who banned smoking in the White House was clearly on their side and a Clinton presidential victory would clearly lead to a repeat of the National Prohibition Experiment, but this time aimed at alcohol.
 
CNN has always shown strong antismoking bias in its reporting and even supposedly made one of the first modern attempts to forbid its staff from smoking.
 
Imagine their dismay then when St. Hillary came out on national television and disagreed with the concept of a nationally imposed smoking ban!
 
Fortunately, when you're as big a dog in the yard as CNN, "inconvenient truths" don't really have to be so "inconvenient"... after all, you can just pull out your handy dandy George Orwell approved Magic Eraser and rewrite reality!
 
On Aug. 28th the NY Post ran a story headlined,  "Hill Eyes National Cig Curb", a biased headline given the facts, but at least accurately reported Hillary Clinton's position, namely that she stated she "deferred to local governments" rather than push for a new national Prohibition experiment.
 
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This story however provided some very interesting insight into the power of editorial juggling and how the media can bias the information fed to the public.  The Post itself did nothing overtly wrong although its headline DID "hint" at that Hillary's position was different than what it was, but on the internet CNN.com picked up the Post's story, ran with it in near totality at their "ticker" website:
 
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/08/28/cnn-political-ticker-am-50/
 
but made one VERY significant change:  They lopped off the all-importance last sentence of the story where Hillary made her anti-ban stance clear as in the statement above.
 
Why did they do that?  Well, the headline CNN.com gave the "edited" story explains it clearly: CNN headlined the story, "HILLARY SUPPORTS NATIONAL SMOKING BAN"
 
which of course is the exact, diametrical opposite of the facts as presented by the New York Post.  The pro-smoking ban bias of CNN shows through by the fact that they managed to squeeze that headline in by deliberately lopping out just that one, single, all-important ending sentence: "Asked whether the feds should impose a nationwide ban, Clinton deferred to local governments."
 
This was not a case of simple editorial discretion, but an outright Orwellian attempt to rewrite the news falsely in order to support an editorial position. CNN should feel ashamed of itself, apologize to its readers, and apologize to the NY Post as well for misusing its resources.  The New York Post might also want to take a second look at its own reporting: "Hillary Eyes National Cig Curb" does NOT accurately reflect a story in which they state that she REJECTED such a curb!
 
Winston Smith, toiling at his desk in Orwell's 1984 would feel quite at home in today's media world.
 
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
Mid-Atlantic Director, Citizens Freedom Alliance, Inc.
Director, Pennsylvania Smokers' Action Network (PASAN)
web page: http://pasan.thetruthisalie.com/
mailto: Cantiloper@aol.com

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AMA: smoke ban needed in U.S. workplace
DALLAS, Nov. 8 (UPI)

National legislation should ban smoking in all U.S. workplaces, the American Medical Association urged Tuesday.

In its interim meeting, the policymaking House of Delegates of the AMA expanded a resolution aimed at dining establishments to include the workplace.

The resolution was overwhelmingly approved by the body with the added provision that any law enacted not conflict with stricter state or local smoking bans.

"It seemed obvious that when people are in the workplace they are gathered in groups much the way they are in restaurants and food establishments," said Robert Wah, a reproductive endocrinologist from McLean, Va., and a member of the AMA Board of Trustees. "The goal of this policy is that, in addition to restaurants, the work place needs protection as well," he said.

Wah noted that 12 states already have laws and regulations banning smoking in the workplace as do many U.S. cities.