smoking outdoors banned

[Magiver]

@Thudlow_Boink

In that article I see evidence of correlation but not of causation. How do they know the decline in business isn’t just due to the worsening economy?

probably because the majority of business owners can see that their regular smoking customers disappeared immediately after the ban as well as a rapid drop off of revenue. In my state there are many bars that have an almost exclusive base of smokers so they are faced with a choice of closing or they ignore the fines and hope the law is overturned. Some counties have even announced they will not enforce the ban because of the loss of tax revenue.

I am an occasional cigar smoker and could easily give it up but I boycott any business that bans smoking entirely. I’m drawing my own line in the sand because they will assuredly come after other stuff given the ability to do so.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

probably because the majority of business owners can see that their regular smoking customers disappeared immediately after the ban as well as a rapid drop off of revenue.

So now they need to market their businesses to nonsmokers. It takes time to build up new regulars. A lot of nonsmokers never got into the habit of hanging out in bars, BECAUSE the smoke was so bad.

And there’s a lot more nonsmokers than smokers, these days.

[Magiver]

@Lynn_Bodoni

So now they need to market their businesses to nonsmokers. It takes time to build up new regulars. A lot of nonsmokers never got into the habit of hanging out in bars, BECAUSE the smoke was so bad.

And there’s a lot more nonsmokers than smokers, these days.

I’m sorry but you are clueless and there is no other way to say it. You are truly clueless about this. “they only need to market their business to nonsmokers”? That’s like saying McDonalds would only have to market it’s restaurants to vegetarians if meat was outlawed. The vast majority of small bars have a heavy percentage of smoking patrons. When they go, there isn’t a market of non-smokers waiting to swoop in. Upscale bars may survive but most others suffer for it.

Do you really think that small business owners are wealthy and have some kind of financial war chest ready for stuff like this? Have you never seen businesses fold after a brief road construction project makes it tough for patrons to get in?

[Lynn_Bodoni]

The vast majority of small bars have a heavy percentage of smoking patrons. When they go, there isn’t a market of non-smokers waiting to swoop in.

No, the nonsmokers haven’t been waiting to swoop in. They tried going in when smoking was allowed, couldn’t breathe, and quickly departed.

I’ve gone into places that had arcade games that I wanted to play. Yeah, this was a while ago. But I couldn’t stay for very long at all, because of the smoke. I did get accustomed to hanging out at the few smokefree arcades that were available. I’m not in the habit of going to concerts. I’d get excited that an artist that I enjoy was coming to my city, only to find that they were playing in a notoriously smoky venue. So now those venues have to reach out to me, and tell me that I can breathe in their clubs and halls. In at least one popular club around here, the nonsmoking area is a joke. I’d have to pass through a smoking area to get to the nonsmoking area. There’s a couple of restaurants like that, too. If I want to eat at those places, I have to pass through the smoking section on my way to the nonsmoking section…which doesn’t have any sort of barriers, so the smoke drifts into it. So I just don’t go to those restaurants any more.

Smoking used to be allowed in all sorts of retail establishments. I remember going grocery shopping with my grandfather, and he’d be puffing away on his Raleighs, and sending me to get this or that. People used to smoke in clothing and book stores, too, until the companies realized that it was a fire hazard and they were getting a lot of damaged merchandise.

My point is, places that allowed smoking have made nonsmokers feel unwelcome for decades. It’s going to take a while to change the nonsmokers’ perceptions of places, and to change their habits.

Your analogy doesn’t hold, by the way. Vegetarians are a minority of the population, not the majority.

I know that small business owners usually don’t have a lot of financial resources, but any business which doesn’t have SOME cushion can pretty much count on folding, sooner or later. Maybe it’s construction that makes it harder for patrons to get to the business, maybe it’s a two week snow storm. I looked into buying a small business, and the first thing everyone told me was to make sure that my business COULD weather a period of very low sales. I was told that I couldn’t count on turning a profit for about five years…and that’s after a couple of initial years of simply hemorrhaging money. It might be that the little bars can’t attract nonsmokers. Well, there were businesses that folded when they couldn’t hire children for pennies a day, or when they had to be a little more environmentally conscious. Businesses don’t have some sort of constitutional guarantee that conditions will always stay the same. They have to adapt or go under. This has always been so.

[aruvqan]

@ducati

Yeah, every time that damned ice cream truck jingles by, they all jump on their Rascals and chase them down the street!

“I want a Push-Up!” “I want a BombPop!”

I don’t deny that obesity has several costs and troubles associated with it, but I’d like a cite on the time lost to snacking vs. smoking…

In my 20 years of working since they started messing with smoking [back in the 70s the guys in my machine shop had ashtrays at their workstations] I saw smokers getting extra breaks to go out and light up, I never got any extra breaktime to snack [not that I ever wanted extra snack breaks anyway] and when I was in the call center for Wells Fargo/ADT, I had one of those cigarette in glass tube novelties and I would go out for “cigarette” breaks if things got really nasty and I needed a breath of air. [You try waking up the security director of PNC Bank/Jersey and telling him that the main Trenton branch never got the alarm system turned back on after the cleaners left …]

[Nzinga_Seated]

@rachelellogram

Amazon.com: Respro Allergy Face Mask : Health & Household

I’m dying.

[Jackmannii]

@Magiver

I am an occasional cigar smoker and could easily give it up but I boycott any business that bans smoking entirely. I’m drawing my own line in the sand because they will assuredly come after other stuff given the ability to do so.

I find it odd that smokers are on the one hand castigating the rest of us for not paying enough attention to the plight of small business owners, while simultaneously smokers are supposedly staying away from non-smoking bars and restaurants in droves, forcing them to close or lay off workers (in this case, to “make a point”).

Fortunately for bars and restaurants, there remains a lack of evidence for wholesale layoffs and closings due to smoking bans (as noted earlier in this thread, the impact of smoking bans has repeatedly been found to be neutral or even positive on income). The few businesses that dig in their heels, refuse to adapt to changing conditions and accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in fines (and hefty legal fees) while ignoring/challenging the law, could well go under.

It’s like Lynn points out - there have always been marginal businesses that get by only if they cut corners on selling a safe product and/or ensuring compliance with other health/safety regulations affecting employees and customers. There were probably predictions of doom by restaurateurs when the first health department inspections started. Somehow the restaurant industry has adapted and survived.