Smoking bans haven't caused restaurants to suffer economically, early data shows

Early data from communities with public-smoking bans indicates restaurants do not suffer economically and enforcement is not problematic.

“Really, most of what we’ve heard is positive,” said Tosha Daugherty, a spokeswoman for the Bloomington/Monroe County Convention & Visitors Bureau. “There are a few restaurants that have claimed they have lost business, but they are in the minority.”

The Bloomington City Council passed its smoking ban ordinance in early 2003, but opted to phase-in its components. On Aug. 1, 2003, smoking was outlawed in most of the city’s public places — including restaurants — and places of employment.

On Jan. 1, 2005, it became illegal to smoke in Bloomington’s bars. In February 2006, the remainder of Monroe County is subject to a public smoking ban, the result of an ordinance passed by the county commissioners there.

Daugherty said there were some problems between the time the ordinance took effect in restaurants and when bars went smoke-free at the beginning of this year.

“The restaurants were losing business to bars,” she said. “To tell you the truth, the bars were relieved” when they, too, were affected by the law.

Daugherty said many bar owners were uncomfortable with the contention the temporary law caused between them and restaurant owners and some bars voluntarily adopted smoke-free policies in advance of the law affecting them.

Daugherty’s anecdotal evidence that the smoking ban has not hurt Bloomington’s bars and restaurants is backed up by data in other communities with similar laws.

Bloomington is one of 4,800 U.S. communities that have at least partial public or workplace smoking bans, according to Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, a California group that advocates government initiatives to limit exposure to secondhand smoke.

Fort Wayne implemented smoking ban in January 1999 in the city’s restaurants. Eateries could allow people to light up if they offered enclosed smoking areas. Taverns and bowling alleys are exempt from Fort Wayne’s law.

In May 2001, William Styring III, of the conservative Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute, published a study that examined the economic impact Fort Wayne’s smoking ban had on restaurants. Funded by Smokefree Indiana and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study concluded, “Fort Wayne’s ban on smoking in restaurants had no numerically verifiable impact on the volume of restaurant business in Allen County.”

Styring, a 1 1/2-pack-a-day smoker, concluded the fluctuation in food and beverage taxes collected in Allen County — $4 million in 1998, $3.9 million in 1999 and $4.4 million in 2000 — reflected the county’s general economic ups and downs during those years.

Fayetteville, Ark., has been largely smoke-free since March 2004. A study by the University of Arkansas’ Center for Business and Economic Research at the Sam M. Walton College of Business concluded that in its first year, the ban had no negative economic impact in the city, even when compared to communities near Fayetteville where people can still smoke in restaurants.

“It hasn’t hurt employment, it hasn’t hurt (food and beverage) tax collections; it certainly hasn’t prevented new restaurants from locating in this marketplace,” said center Director Jeffery T. Collins. “It’s not been obvious in Fayetteville that there’s been any negative impact.”

Collins said before Fayetteville enacted its ordinance, he was asked to review the economic impact of bans in other U.S. communities. The effects, he said, were negligible.

Enforcement of ordinances hasn’t been too difficult, either.

In Louisville, where a public smoking ban was implemented earlier this month, the Metro Health Department’s 33 inspectors had little to enforce in the way of smoking during the ban’s first days, said Dr. Adewale Troutman, the department’s director. All of the inspectors responsible for enforcing Louisville’s ordinance were already employed by the department, he said.

“We are not going around with red lights and sirens,” Troutman said Nov. 21 when he addressed the Jeffersonville City Council during a workshop. “This will be a self-enforcing ordinance.”

Troutman said during the first 48 hours of Louisville’s ban, the health department received just 16 phone calls about the law and “only a handful of complaints” were among them. “It’s been a very smooth transition for us,” he said.

In Lexington-Fayette County, Ky., a smoking ban was slated to take effect in 2003, but it wasn’t implemented until April 2004 after the Kentucky Supreme Court postponed the law.

Jessica Cobb, a spokeswoman with the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department’s Environmental Division, said an average of 36 citations have been issued per month this year, up from 24 per month after the department began enforcing the ban in 2004.

Initially, she said, the department averaged about 100 monthly complaints relating to ordinance violations, but that has fallen to about 10 per month now.

“The number of complaints has varied greatly since the inception of the ordinance,” Cobb said.

With more than 260,000 people, Lexington-Fayette County’s population is about nine times greater than Jeffersonville’s.