NYC: Smoking Banned in Bars & Restaurants

Allowing for sufficiently generous definitions of "food."

What on earth does this mean?

n.: should read "people" not "places" i think it means that these laws are primarily put in place to protect the health of the employees.

Hooray for Chicago -- the last place besides portions of montana and texas where anything will be left legal in ten years.

(I am a smoker and the bill doesn't bother me at all. I understand how frustrating it is for all yall pussies!)

I hate to say it but I do get annoyed when laws like this are championed by non-smokers simply because they're annoyed by smoking environments: there's a perfectly free market in operation for smoking versus smoke-free environments, and given that the proportions of the two are continually adjusting themselves to time and place, I'm not convinced that this market isn't working. (In other words, if enough people really wanted non-smoking bars, it would economically viable to have them in first place -- just as it's been with restaurants.) Apart from various wizened lunatics it's rare to see anyone demanding that they should be able to smoke in a given environment; something rubs me the wrong way about some non-smokers (not necessarily anyone here!) excitedly demanding that businesses conform to their no-smoke preference. In other words, smokers are entirely comfortable with the idea that their choices of what businesses to patronize may be strongly affected by whether those businesses allow smoking or not; sometimes non-smokers seem loathe to do the same.

(This is why I said the employee aspect is the most legitimate one, insofar as they obviously don't have the same wide-open rational-choice options as customers. And obviously non-smokers will find the overall effect a boon, which is perfectly natural.)

Either way, if health is the main factor, why not concentrate on cleaner air emissions instead? That kinda effects a lot more people in the long run, don't it?

And I'll start laughing if Washington state promotes anything similar. This state is the last holdout for proud smokers on the West side pretty much. (British Columbia and Oregon have slightly stricter laws, especially in Vancouver, Victoria, and Portland)

And yes, ash-smelling clothes is annoying. But life sucks waah waah etc.

Also, I get annoyed, and did before I started smoking, at people who demonize smokers. RIGHT NOW, I could go out and buy a gun and shoot someone. And, in the minute that it is taking me to write this post, tons and tons of pollution are being spwewed into the air. Also, a pedestrian was just run over by a drunk driver. Speaking of drunks, if public health were really a concern, wouldn't drinking be banned before smoking?

During my freshman year of college, I was standing outside of my dorm. One of my roomates was a nonsmoker, so I would go outside when he was around. As I was smoking, at a polite distance from the door, this woman yelled at me, telling me that I "was going to die." What kind of asshole speaks to people this way? It really hurt me. I was already making a number of concessions to the health of others without complaint. Why the hysterics? This woman was actually quite overweight, too, and I could have made a comment back, but I didn't want to sink to that level. Why can't we ban self-righteous assholes from bars instead?

Could someone please explain the anti-smoker sentiment, as opposed to the anti-smoke sentiment?

Except Anna should come around occasionally and give me one of hers, obv. (You didn't show at the last FAP, Anna! Dr C and I had to bum fags off of Andrew instead!)

I wouldn't have to wear lipstick and stiletto heels, would I?

Umm ... because patrons are electing, of their own volition, to enter environments where they know that smoking is allowed. As per Tracer's comments above, employees in this industry don't have the same freedom to go elsewhere.

I don't understand why people who don't smoke or cannot put up with smoke (either ethically or medically) should have to come home reeking and sick just for the privilege of seeing a concert.

But one could just as easily say that it shouldn't be incumbent upon the concert's other attendees to adjust their behavior to make the environment pleasant for non-smokers. I mean, if you can't handle the noise of a concert (also a minor health issue, really), I doubt anyone would sympathize with requests to turn it down: it's understood that a certain volume is part of the environment at a concert, and that if that bothers you you shouldn't go. So I think that -- excepting the employees issue -- there's a very legitimate point to be made that the owners of venues or bars have decided upon the environment they're offering (loud, quiet, dark, bright, smoky, not), and it's the consumer's own responsibility to decide whether he or she wants to consume that product or not. So long as smoking is a legal activity, that's something of a fair point. Saying "I shouldn't have to be around smoke to patronize this establishment" is like saying "I shouldn't have to be around seafood to have dinner at Red Lobster" -- that's part of what the product they're offering is.

The main thing I continue to wonder is this: if a significant portion of the public would really prefer non-smoking bars or venues, why don't they exist? I mean, if the smoke issue is truly important to a large percentage of patrons, shouldn't it be economically advantageous to serve that clientele? (I'm guessing the answer to this question is that the smokiness of the environment is honestly very far down on the list of important factors for most people, far below all the usual things that make a place good or not.)

and of course there are certain 'cool' places where it's allowed.

I don't think it's a given that smoke should be a GIVEN with a concert. The noise comparison is fair, but it's also fairly cheap and easy to bring earplugs to a show. The analogue would be bringing a gasmask to the show to avoid the smoke, but you'd still smell like an ashtray when you got home.

You're not eating the right seafood, Sean!

And if you really think that smoking should still be allowed in restaurants and clubs, why not airplanes? Your workplace? The doctor's office? (Provided, of course, that the owners/employers there thought that smoking should be allowed in those buildings or places?) If not, what's the difference?

With airplanes it's in part a pure-safety issue and in part the fact that airplanes are in some sense a "public" industry in the federal sense. But if someone wanted to start up a smoking airline I wouldn't see that as a problem for the patrons. As I said before, though, I agree w/r/t employees, whether it's my workplace (where there aren't any "patrons" anyway) or a bartender's.

I mean, my only point -- completely leaving aside the employment issue -- is that bar owners, club owners, and restraunteurs are offering a product, and that product is in large part the environment. They make decisions all the time as to what things people are allowed and are not allowed to do in those environments. And there's clearly a demand for environments in which people are allowed to smoke: there's something offputting to me about other patrons who'd like to keep that from happening simply because they prefer the opposite. Hence the seafood metaphor: if people genuinely want to be able to go somewhere and eat seafood, no one would dream of stopping them just because he or she was annoyed or irritated or disgusted by the presence of people doing that. It doesn't matter if it's jumping over at you or not: the point is that that's the environment as it was designed, that's the behavior that's allowed, and if you don't like it no one is requiring you to go.

Anyway I'm not really arguing against these laws, per the employees comments above. But I just wonder about certain arguments in favor of them. People decide, day in and day out, not to patronize certain establishments because of different things about the environment, without dreaming of forcing those things to change: smokers occasionally avoid establishments where they can't smoke; people who don't like noise are content to avoid loud places; people who are made sick by the smell of shrimp don't go to Red Lobster. There are actually very few leisure activities that are legal in private and not in public, and the vast majority of them are sexual: it just vaguely disturbs me, on some theoretical level, that the impetus for expanding that onto smoking -- something consenting adults and business owners are all happy to have going on in designated areas of whose existence everyone is forewarned -- should come from anything other than the very reasonable effect on employees.

(And I understand the useless "loophole" to the NYC law is that bars can create smoking rooms, so long as they're ventilated completely separate from the bar proper and no employees enter it to provide service. In other words, the exactly equivalent of "outside," only inside.)

Not "some", most! It's insane, I mean what the hell is that about? Dancing, that's the real threat here, damnit.

Anyway, whatever, Bloomberg is a psycho who has now spent MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in a city that has a billion dollar budget deficit to talk about how smoking is bad cos he used to do it and now he doesn't. I hope he gets run over by llamas. I don't care if I can't smoke (I last 8hr + days at work, don't I?), but I'm sick and tired of this fucking health thing that nonsmokers blare on and on about - DO YOU PEOPLE NOT REALIZE THAT YOU ARE SITTING IN BARS KNOCKING BACK MANY DRINKS? DO YOU THINK YOUR LIVER IS HAPPY?

Self-righteous fucks. Drinking causes more health problems and a bigger public nuisance anyway - we should be taxing that out the ass and banning that from bars. After all, while I'm following around Dan blowing smoke in his face, the drunks might be running over YOUR CHILDREN with their death cars!

BTW - I totally agree that a bartender shouldn't have to change professions because they are pregnant but on the other hand how the hell can you not change professions when you have a newborn baby? It's not like bars have maternity leave you know...

But certainly health codes in restaurants are not unheard of?

The main thing I continue to wonder is this: if a significant portion of the public would really prefer non-smoking bars or venues, why don't they exist?

So the marketplace will correct itself? Where is Nitsuh and what have you done with him?

the restriction on smoking in outdoor cafes/bars is also a little extreme - no more than 25% of the seating and has to be grouped together in smoking zone? So can't smoke inside and probably can't even find a place to sit outdoors.

re dancing, Giuliani reactivated a law from the 20s that prohibited dancing unless you had a cabaret license. In NYC only around 280 or so places have cabaret licenses so for all intents and purposes dancing is illegal and you have police patrolling and raiding places for "illegal dancing". Nice to see that the city has its priorities in place.

Has the idea of requiring both smoking and non-smoking bars in a city ever been tried? It would be interesting to see how popular the smoking vs non-smoking places are. Personally I think everone would go to the smoking bars, but I have no proof of this. Does it happen?

And bnw, I just happen to think that Which Bar to Patronize is actually a very free and effective market. There's constant opportunity for competition, new bars opening and succeeding or then failing and closing every day. There are tons of them. Their proprietors' whole skill as businesspeople is to correctly identify the sort of environments that people want, and to effectively adapt to them as soon as they change. It's a state of absolute flux where newness and difference are actually a selling point, and so I find it hard to imagine that it's just too ossified and set in its ways to adjust properly.

HAHAHAHA Tom has mentioned an excellent point with the "special smoking room where no employees can enter" - that sounds like the coke room to me.

And yes, you can get in trouble for dancing! We were in Light this one time, and they play the music LOUD in there, like beyond loud, and the waitress came over and screamed at us for dancing, and threatened to call the cops. It was surreal> Where is Kevin Bacon when you need him?

2) Not everyone who goes to a bar is sitting there getting pickled. Again, I harp on the concerts because it's what bugs me most: I can go and have one beer or maybe just a soda without worrying too much about my liver. Breathing smoke for the entire night, however, means I'll be coughing up junk for two days. Don't make the assumption that everyone in yr local bar is there to get smashed.

I mean, I can understand it if you want to ban smoking from somewhere showing live music, but what the hell are you doing in a regular bar BESIDES unhealthy activity?

The alcohol comparison doesn't hold up in any case, mainly because the act of alcohol consumption doesn't affect others in a harmful way, obv. unlike smoking. In addition, it's worth noting that the law does not normally excuse an inebriated person who causes physical harm to someone else as a result of drinking - so basically, once it does regard PUBLIC health, drinking IS illegal. Harming yourself is an entirely separate issue.

it is very difficult to appreciate the various sides of this argument. when i was a smoker, it was hard for me to understand why people were so bothered by it. before i started smoking, it would have been impossible to understand what that physical addiction was like. ack, that train of thought is going nowhere,

comparing smoking and automobile exhaust strikes me as fairly stupid. most people are neither running their cars inside of bars or putting their lips to the tailpipe and inhaling deeply. no doubt, cars sux0r in terms of pollution. that is a totally separate issue. i do think cars are more useful than cigarettes

also, it's not like you won't be able to smoke when you go out. you will excuse yourselves every once in a while, go outside or to this smoking room thing, and then come back in. who are the "pussies"?

i'm not really anti-smoker. the main thing is, i've experienced the non-smoking bars in california, and i think they are great. that's why i would be supportive of the policy spreading

...and i'm with Sean C. that not everyone in the bar is getting hammered.

Sorry, second hand smoke is assault, and c'mon, it's not just "discomfort". The health effects on the non-smoker, both short term (next day nausea, respiratory irritation) and long term are real. Please note, I think many drugs should be decriminalized. It's not anyone else's business how you amuse yrself.

One non-smoking libertarian friend of mine analogized "well, if you don't want to get hit, don't go climbing into the boxing ring". Funny. Also, "plenty of jobs are more dangerous to the health of the employee than bar staff- look at meat packing!" My incredulous stare seemed to have little effect on his certainty that the market would create non-smoking venues if the public wanted them. But he's an investment analyst, they're like that.

I drink, don't smoke, and I vote. *ducks*

hope i am correctly identifying who yr referring to as in the minority, hunter. obv i don't know exactly what yr talking about with this other post of nabisco's

a quick look around the web tells me that percentage of smokers in most places varies between 20-35% of the population = guess what, the non-smokers are probably going to get to make most of the rules.

is this accurate?

That's horrible, dancing is what you do on the way back from the toilet (or in this case the smoking room) to your seat, you dance and smile at people until you sit down again. When I eventually go to New York will some of you come out with me and smash the dancing laws by shaking ass in every non dancing bar all night long.

Smoking is fundamentally different - you can't moderate yourself in the same way because it's the actual act of smoking that has the detrimental effect on those in the same enironment. I mean if someone could invent a "smoke goes into smoker only" type of cigarette then things would be different.

If people disagree with this take, then someone please explain why a smoker should NOT be held accountable for this impact on others, whilst a drinker technically IS?

[1] there are also stupid laws re: music - there are different licences places need for playing recorded music, for live music with up to two musicians (and i think a drum machine counts as a musician but a sequencer or backing track doesn't!), and for live music with over two musicians. at least that's if they haven't changed the laws in the past few years, and i've not heard that they have...

So yeah, I'm still thinking mostly patron-wise, and the boxing-ring analogy is a good one: I would just like to think there could be some way for informed consenting adults to drink in environments where they're allowed to smoke! A decent portion of the population certainly wants to, and it's actually my guess that an even larger portion of current bar employees would prefer the same. (Though one interesting effect of this law will be to open up bar work to a great number of people who previously wouldn't have been interested in the least.)

BTW, my "vocal minority" comment earlier was intended to refer to the percentage of people who are opposed to smoking in bars, regardless of their own smoking/non-smoking status. I have heard it stated that obviously most non-smokers are pro-smoking-in-bars cause so many non-smokers go to smoky bars. I might counter that most of the smokers in Boulder are anti bar smoking, since they go to bars there (where it's illegal to smoke).

Ron: the "special rooms" thing for New York strikes me as a non-starter -- at least in Manhattan, I don't really think too many places would have the space for it. The good thing about this law, New York-wise, is that they've already got trash on the streets and hopefully won't be bothered by the giant crowds of smokers littering the sidewalks.

Hunter: the idea isn't necessarily that people's going to smoking bars endorses allowing smoking; it's that their willingness to go implies that the smoke isn't a big enough issue to prevent their patronizing smoking bars. I have no doubt that it'll be the same thing the other way round (i.e., smokers will still be going to bars), but the fact that those in the industry choose to allow smoking -- and near-unanimously claim that disallowing it would harm their businesses -- would seem to imply that the market points in the opposite direction.

that said, it sucks 'cause i smoke, work in NYC, and occasionally go to NYC bars -- and let's hope that they don't start getting any ideas on our side of the Hudson.

However 'cigar bars' are exempt from the rule -- does anyone else see them catching on like wildfire?

As to smoking at gigs, I went to see Kristin Hersh when she was pregnant and the venue asked people not to smoke. I think also when Nick played out when his eye first started acting up, people were also asked not to smoke. There were no people who refused to comply.

The more I think about it, the most it's like trashy television or sex in movies or something: everyone says they disapprove of it, but it's nonetheless what appears to make money. So the question becomes whether it succeeds because people really do want it or because the industry is somehow forcing it on them through lack of options. The entertainment industry's been smart enough to agree to try and solve this perceived problem voluntarily; I hope the bar industry in other cities does the same before blanket bans are slapped down legislatively.

OK several points:

1) The quote about "saving people's lives" makes me physically disgusted and ill: by driving them into $12k worth of debt suddenly, out of the blue, and demanding immediate payment?? Real philanthropists, eh.
2) I have never in my life heard of anyone going after "back taxes" for internet/mail order purchases that are cheating the state of their sales taxes (Amazon would be the biggest sales tax cheat I can think of). How is this justified? Is it a difference specifically in alcohol/tobacco regulations? Keeping that in mind...
3) I really don't think anyone's planning on going after anyone who has internet/mail ordered booze for their "back taxes".

Does anyone more knowledgable than me about tax regulations have any thoughts on this? If my understanding isn't completely fuxored, this seems pretty much illegal. How did they even find these people anyway? In what way do they have the right to seize sales records from stores in another state?

You Yankees sure are silly. Now excuse me while I drive over to the next county for a six pack of Lite.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/nyregion/25tobacco.html?ref=nyregion

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/02/25/nyregion/TOBACCO2/TOBACCO2-articleLarge-v2.jpg

^^^ pretty decent anti-smoking ad there

Ha I thought that was a pic of Patti Smith!