Some small business owners in MI say lawmakers no longer welcome

[The Straight Story]

Victims of Smoking Ban Cut Off Politicians
Lawmakers no longer welcome in bars and restaurants hurt by state smoking policy


Small bar owners angered over losing their butts to the statewide indoor smoking ban plan to give lawmakers the boot.

A newly formed group, Protect Private Property Rights in Michigan (PPPRM), has organized an effort to ban lawmakers from their establishments in protest against Michigan's smoking ban. This lawmaker ban is scheduled to start Sept. 1. PPPRM, which claims to have a membership of about 500 businesses, argues that the smoking ban has been disastrous for Michigan's small bar owners and their employees.

“We're not smoking advocates or advocates for tobacco use,” PPPRM Executive Director Stephen Mace said. “We 're just people who believe in private property rights and are trying to speak out against this law that's hurting us and our employees. It has already put some of us out of business.”

According to Mace, participating bars are being provided with photos of local lawmakers so they can identify them if they enter their establishments. However, the governor, lieutenant governor, House speaker and Senate majority leader will be exempt from the ban.

http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/15622

Shhhh, it's all about smoking really. Just like abortion is all about saving a fetus and not about a person's right to choose.

It's all in how you frame it. Rights, freedom, choice. I kind of have gotten attached to those things.

[ixion]

1. Anti-smoking zealots need to be stopped

glad to see bar owners fighting back! :woohoo:

[madrchsod]

2. has`t hurt the small bars in my city...

i enjoy going to the bars again because i can breathe the air and when i leave i don`t smell like an ash tray.

[ixion]

3. and the world is all there for you, right?

:eyes:

I don't have a problem with people who want to start a no-smoking establishment. I do have a problem with outlawing the CHOICE to start a smoking or a non-smoking place.

[Scruffy1]

4. This ignores the health of the employees.

I am a smoker and I cannot an any way justify giving someone else cancer or other health problems. If you had that much polution in an industrial place it would be shut down.

I heard the same doomsday scenario in Minnesota from bar owners, but their business has gone up.

[ixion]

5. nope, that's a red herring

If you don't like the culture somewhere, smoking or otherwise, you won't work there. Nice try, but no cigar.

[madrchsod]

6. my wife was a bartender for 30yrs before the law was past in illinois

she is a smoker and it does`t bother her to go outside. she finally admitted that she wished the law was in effect when she was bartending.

i quit smoking in 82.

[bluestate10]

12. The poster simply stated an observation. I see the same dynamics as

the poster in eating places in several cities in my state that I frequent. The smoking ban appears to have had a positive impact on business.

[ixion]

15. I can name a dozen or better bar owners that would say otherwise

and once again, it is irrelevant. The point is that the establishment owner should be able to CHOOSE.

[spooky3]

25. No, business owners generally have an obligation to maintain a safe work environment. See OSHA.

If your friends want to maintain private clubs, that's one thing, but businesses established to make profits from the public have obligations.

Second-hand smoke harms employees, and society as well as the employees pays the costs of that harm. It's irrelevant that a given employee chose to work there, because whoever is hired would be subject to the same risks, and society pays part of the cost as well.

As a bonus, the controlled empirical evidence in multiple states suggests that it has not harmed business; there is some evidence that business has increased. Anecdotes from a handful of non-randomly selected friends are not evidence. There are far more non-smokers in society than smokers now, so it makes sense that more people would be happy about these bans than put off by them.

A good argument can be made for banning all smoking everywhere because it is so harmful, but the monied interests have kept that from happening. Banning it in restaurants/bars is a small compromise.

[bluestate10]

29. Thanks for responding to hysteria with facts.

The trend in my state implies that restaurant and bar business has increased after smoking bans were applied to both. Restaurants got the ban a few years before bars. Data from restaurants and surveys of bar patrons led to the ban being applied to bars.

I have never smoked. So I may be toward the virulent side in regards to smoking. I wish for a ban on smoking in motor vehicles. For the life of me I can't understand why people that claim to love cigarettes so much drive with the windows down when smoking, even during winter. My AC or heating system picks up the scum and send it into my car. A smoking ban would be applied like a seatbelt law, if a cop stops a car and detects smoke a field air test can be done on the car, if positive, the driver would be fined enough to pay for the expense of the field test and the cop's time.

[dmallind]

34. Choose to allow smoking?

Choose to store fresh meat over dairy products?

Choose to not provide running water in the bathrooms?

Choose not to provide bathrooms?

Choose to employ children 80 hrs a week?

Why be able to choose to ignore one public health risk and not all?

[seabeyond]

8. have you discussed it with small bar owners? i heard it wasnt hurting business. looks like it is.

i dont know and i dont care about a smoking ban, but i dont know it isnt hurting them

[bluestate10]

11. Nor mine. In fact, business appears to be more robust. nt

[madinmaryland]

7. Idiots. They will lose half their business by banning lawmakers and their lobbyists.

Morans.

[zalinda]

9. They banned smoking in bars & restaurants here

Most bar owners were horrified and thought their businesses would go down, but that didn't turn out to be the case. What happened is a few bar owners decided to make their bars 'private' clubs, so they could get around the law. There were just a handful of permits that could be had. What eventually happened was most of the bars and restaurants saw their businesses increase, as those who didn't go out before did. I don't know what happened to the 'private' clubs.

This work around solution worked, and every one got their pony.

zalinda

[bluestate10]

13. I noticed an increase in business in eating places that I visited before

my state's smoking ban and after the ban. Business owners stopped complaining fast.

[bluestate10]

10. The business owners need study other states that banned smoking in public

eating places many years back. I live in one of those states. Getting into good restaurants has never been harder. I appears to me that more people eat out BECAUSE smoking was banned.

[The Straight Story]

18. Here in Ohio, it is banned - but the bar down the street is booming, because they ignore it

As do many bars here. Cost of enforcing it is pretty high.

So yeah, the numbers might show things are OK - but they don't tell the whole story.

Wendy's banned smoking there years ago, that was their choice - and I applaud their ability to make such choice.

Why is it so many want to remove the choice of people? The religious right and the left chief among them....

Maybe they have something in common. Control over sinners and saving them.

Guess those folks from Europe had the right idea here - savages need someone to control them and their choices.

[former9thward]

14. Good. An action I like to see.

There should be consequences for taking away rights.

[Taitertots]

16. Employers don't get to choose to expose their workers to known health hazards

Freedom, Choice, Protecting workers from a physically harmful workplace. I've gotten attached to being able to make a living without facing known health hazards.

[The Straight Story]

17. ya know, I had an interesting call from a teacher this week

We were making small talk while I was working on her technical problem. She was from Texas.

We go to talking about the drought and heat, told her I used to live in CA. Told her I understood the heat, and that Bakersfield, where I used to live had the worst pollution of any city in the US.

She told me about her late husband. Got throat cancer (not from smoking is all she said) and he had a voice box that had a filter.

They changed it once a day there. They went to visit his family in Southern CA (Fresno IIRC) and she said they had to change it every two hours there due to the pollution.

When people ditch their cars, their electricity based on coal, etc then they can get back to me about 'protecting others'.

I have gotten attached to being able to work where I want and not being forced to work at a company, and I have gotten attached to being able to choose who I want to spend an evening with doing what.

Here's an idea - let people decide. If you don't want to go to a bar that allows smoking - don't. How hard is that?

If you want to work at a bar that does not allow smoking - more power to you.

Choice - it used to mean something here in the US.

[Taitertots]

21. Does that make smoking any less dangerous?

If you think those are bad, why do you think harming people with smoking is acceptable.

Employers can't choose to hurt their workers. Choice USED to mean employers could profit from hurting their workers. Thankfully workers have protection from being exposed to known hazards.

"I have gotten attached to being able to work where I want and not being forced to work at a company, and I have gotten attached to being able to choose who I want to spend an evening with doing what."
I have gotten attached to being able to work in an environment that isn't going to poison me. Poison yourself at home. Workers shouldn't have to suffer because drug addicts need a fix. Your addiction, Oh I mean attachments mean nothing compared to the lives of other people.

[The Straight Story]

22. It means just this:

If you are going to preach about addiction - give up your computer, electricity, car, etc that are harming far more people.

No one makes anyone go to a bar or work there.

Hospitals, grocery store, etc? Ok - no problem there. But you don't NEED to go to a bar or a restaurant. That is a choice you make - and you don't have to work anywhere you do not wish to.

You wanna make a law that people employing more than 20 people cannot allow smoking at their desks, I can get down with that. A small bar in a small town - not so much. There are extremes (like the Scotts lawn company that will fire you even if you smoke at home, and they drug test for it - their business I guess, I won't work for them).

If you REALLY want to protect people, start with yourself.

[Taitertots]

24. No one makes anyone go anywhere or work anywhere, and yet we still must protect workers

Workers should never have to choose between their livelihood and their health. Forcing that choice on people is something I vehemently oppose.

"If you are going to preach about addiction - give up your computer, electricity, car, etc that are harming far more people"
I'm not addicted to any of those, and the harm created is orders of magnitude less than smoking.

Again, if you think those things are bad, why do you embrace hurting people orders of magnitude worse? Not to mention the fact that you are on a computer using electricity. Even if you don't use a car, your lifestyle is just as dependent on automobiles as mine. Why do you think harming other people to service a drug addiction is acceptable?

[bluestate10]

30. I guess cigarette companies are not corporatist to you. But every other capitalist company is.

Weird.

[roguevalley]

27. dirty cars, smoking, etc all of it is shit. we are smarter than this and

frankly, I am having a hard time caring about the 'rights' of smokers.

for FIVE HUNDRED YEARS non-smokers had to eat shit because of the 'right' of smokers to exhale their addictions in our faces. they killed themselves and a lot of people who didn't smoke because they were ADDICTED to the DRUG of tobacco. A lot of fat cats got rich over it and a lot of people got dead.

FIVE HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS OF EATING SMOKER'S SHIT! GET OVER IT! Your addiction is DYING OUT or these laws would not pass and I'm fucking glad. I lost my dad, my grandfather, 3 uncles, 2 aunts, three cousins and a lot of friends to cancer from smoking. FUCK SMOKING!!!!!!!!

[justgamma]

19. Iowa is weird with their non-smoking laws.

Can't smoke in the bars, but can smoke in the casinos. I'll bet there are more non smokers in the casinos, that the bars.

There is no smoking anywhere at the reststops. You must stay in your car with the windows rolled up. No more wandering to the edge of the stops to stretch your legs and get away from nonsmokers for a puff.

[bluestate10]

31. The reststop law sounds good. My hope is my state follows. nt

[provis99]

20. now we need to ban alcohol in bars.

after all, why should bar workers be exposed to the problems that drinking customers cause?

[Tx4obama]

23. Touche` . LOL :) n/t

[bluestate10]

32. False equivalency. Laws exists to deal with drunken drivers and bars that over serve. nt

[shintao]

26. I have watched this nonsmoking destroy a city

They started out banning smoking in bars, and the bars dried up when customers went to adjacent towns to drink, dance & smoke. They they banned the cigarette machines and run the vendors out of business. Then they jacked the price of taxes so high it was cheaper to buy from reservations & have them mailed to you, running the cigarette stores out of business. Then they banned smoking at public events and run off sport fans. Today we have a city that lacks entertainment, and people leave the state to go enjoy their weekends unhampered from the zealots.

I don't smoke, by the way, just have observed the events of losing freedoms.

[GoneOffShore]

28. Hasn't happened here in Philly.

All the bar owners were sure that it would kill their business. It didn't.

[bluestate10]

33. The exact opposite in my state and others that implemented smoking regulation.

The bans increased business.

[dmallind]

35. Name the city so we can check data maybe?

Because this didn't happen anywhere I've seen data for - which includes quite a few states and cities. Would be intriguing to see an exception to the normal rule of increased revenue in bars and restaurants.

[JoeHill101]

36. Anti-smoking laws were bought & paid for by BigPharma so they could sell nicotine patches

the entire anti smoking fascism was funded by Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer pharmaceutical giants so that they could sell more nicotine patches. J&J was the primary funder of these laws via their nonprofit foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

See here:
http://www.smokershistory.com/RWJF.htm

I have never been a smoker myself, but how this anti-smoking fascism came about is very telling, and says a lot about america and about homo sapiens. We were evolved to exist in sea of propaganda.