By Danielle Braff/Post-Tribune staff writer
It’s peer pressure time.
With everyone from Chicago to New York to England to Italy banning smoking, the trend is clear.
If everyone is cutting smoking out of their bars, restaurants and public places, could Northwest Indiana be next?
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott’s office is just a half hour drive from Chicago, but McDermott said he doesn’t feel the pressure yet.
“We’re conservative,” McDermott said, explaining that most areas of Indiana are slow to make the changes no matter how trendy they may be. “I don’t have any plans on doing that right now. I think it would place businesses at a disadvantage if I passed laws in Hammond,” McDermott said.
Across the county line, Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas feels differently. His city, six months ago, became embroiled in smoking-prohibition discussions.
Now, bars and restaurants in the city’s historic downtown area that seek liquor licenses must agree to be smoke-free.
“But that’s voluntary — they don’t have to get the license,” Costas said.
Still, he said he expects the city to be seduced into possible expansion of the ban with the global trend growing stronger.
“Clearly the movement is toward non-smoking in public places. Recently, Parliament even voted in Great Britain that way. We are forming a committee to address and dialogue this issue,” Costas said.
He said over the next six to nine months, the committee will look at alternatives to smoking prohibitions, hear testimony from concerned parties and then make recommendations to the City Council. The mayor admits he personally thinks bans are healthful.
“I feel it’s where all cities are going. We want to discourage smoking whenever we can. It has very serious health risks. I think it’s the best direction to go in — but at the same time, I think we need to make sure the community has good dialogue about it,” Costas said.
McDermott said he would strongly oppose a local smoking ban, but if it were a statewide ban, McDermott said he would have to think about it.
“The only fair way to do it would be a state law,” he said.
A growing list of states are making just such a choice — from California to Connecticut, Massachusetts to Montana.
As more and more areas of the state start putting out their cigarettes, McDermott may need to make a decision soon. A gradual phase-in of a ban is already present in Lake County’s jail and work release center, making it illegal to smoke inside the facilities. Smoking was banned inside the Lake County Government Center as well as all county-owned buildings.
The smoking ban headlines are popping up more frequently as each town decides what it’s going to do about seemingly outdated smoking stances.
Frank Perrine of Crown Point said he’s hoping his town won’t be next. He doesn’t smoke in his house because he doesn’t want to bother his wife with the fumes, but when he goes to a bar he likes to have a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other.
“If there was no smoking in a bar, I wouldn’t come in,” he said, taking a puff as he sat inside Good Time Charlie’s, a small, smoke-filled establishment in Hammond.
Perrine’s sentiments were exactly what McDermott said he feared if there was a smoking ban in Hammond. It would drive away business from Hammond’s bars and restaurants, he said.
Josh Jones of Hammond doesn’t smoke, but he argued that banning smoking is a step the government shouldn’t be allowed to take.
“I think it’s an infringement on everyone’s rights and freedoms,” said Jones, one of the only people not holding a cigarette at Good Time Charlie’s. “If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be here.”
Valparaiso City Councilman Chuck Williams agreed. Valparaiso’s City Council spearheaded Northwest Indiana’s move into the non-smoking section when they voted in September to give 10 downtown restaurants special mandatory non-smoking ordinances.
Williams said he didn’t agree with the idea the City Council should be responsible for a bigger ordinance.
“The question is, ’Should the market decide that or should the government impose that on people?’ That’s what the argument is about,” he said.
Williams doesn’t smoke and when he wants to be in a non-smoking atmosphere, he frequents businesses that don’t allow smoking. Other times, he doesn’t care about the smoking environment and frequents business that don’t have a smoking policy.
“I have the choice not to go to a smoking environment and I make that choice,” Williams said.
Since it’s up to consumers to decide where to spend their time, the real smoking ban concerns typically come from businesses, which stand to lose money if single towns ban smoking in area businesses.
Olympia Lanes General Manager Mike Kozy said he wouldn’t care if smoking were banned throughout the state. He would care though, if it were only banned in one area. Kozy’s bowling alley is in Hammond, and Kozy said he worries that if smoking were banned in Hammond, his clients would simply drive another five minutes to Highland, where they could smoke and bowl at the same time.
As legislators worry about how smoking bans would affect their towns, and as business owners worry about how smoking bans would affect their profits, George Rooke of Whiting said he was simply worried about his health.
Rooke said a smoking ban may be the final push he needs to quit his smoking habit.
But Hammond resident and smoker Jon Bunger said everyone was forgetting about one crucial part of the plan.
Bunger smokes two packs a day and he’s been inhaling for 20 years. He’s tried to quit many times, but still winds up with a cigarette in his hand.
If smoking in public places were banned, Bunger said, “It’ll be on someone’s shoulders to help me quit these things. Once they did that, I wouldn’t care.”