Smoking bans could snuff out small bars, eateries

Anyone interested in the proposed smoking bans and initiatives clouding D.C. skies ought to click on www.bantheban.org, and take another puffing perspective.

This spunky site was started primarily by Zoe Mitchell, a single 20-something public advocate who counts among her memberships a group known as “Washington Interns Gone Bad.”

Ms. Mitchell, who said she always wanted to move to the District from her home in Calvert County, Maryland, is one of the new Washingtonians who have converged on the hot U Street corridor.

After this workaholic spends her days “working on the issues I cared about,” she likes to kick back and light up at her neighborhood watering hole, the Kingpin, at 9th and U streets NW.

But Ms. Mitchell is worried that such places will have to close doors if the nation’s capital adopts a smoking ban similar to the one that went into effect in nearby Gaithersburg yesterday.

So am I.

Alvin and Adrienne Carter, owners of the popular Hitching Post on Upshur Street NW, face a similar fate. Their small soul-food restaurant and bar will not survive if they lose their regular clientele — the majority of whom are smokers.

One Rockville restaurant, Dietle’s Tavern, contends it has closed because Montgomery County’s smoking ban caused them to lose substantial business.

I am not a smoker. Because several of my close friends are, we take turns sitting in the smoking or nonsmoking section of restaurants. But in a bar, I just expect a smoke-filled, juke-joint atmosphere.

Proponents of smoking bans argue that these bans do not cause economic hardship for restaurant owners. But many of the studies do not include places such as bowling alleys, bingo parlors, pool halls or bars where food is not sold. Ms. Mitchell points out that most of those studies refer to big restaurant chains, not to family-owned operations.

Just ask Harry E. Mulnix, owner of Harry’s Leaning Tower in Gaithersburg, who predicted in The Washington Times yesterday that the smoking ban that took effect yesterday will cost him 15 percent to 20 percent of his business. Sonny, a bartender at Summit Station, said he would lose money because most of the regular customers at the neighborhood brewery and restaurant are working-class smokers.

Ms. Mitchell and colleague Joanne McNeil, a Washington economic analyst, are using the www.bantheban.org site to lobby against the city’s smoking initiative, which is expected to end up on the November ballot should it withstand a court challenge from the restaurant association.

“Government nannyism” is how one Maryland legislator once characterized the proposed bans on smoking in restaurants and bars, meaning that these intrusive initiatives seek to make children of adults.

From California to New York City, jurisdictions are adopting smoking bans, but not without adverse consequences.

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