Smoking ban has improved business, health many Coloradans say

Five years ago, on the eve of a statewide ban on indoor smoking, many restaurant and bar owners were in a fit of panic.

“Our people will go out of business in droves,” Chuck Ford, director the Colorado Licensed Beverage Association, which represents the state’s bar and tavern owners, told the Rocky Mountain News in 2006 after the smoking ban bill passed.

He said 70 percent of his membership would go out of business, adding that he was “both shocked and disgusted” at the new state law.

Looking back, it turns out it was not a big deal. In fact, most agree it was a good deal.

Business at Colorado restaurants is up considerably. The only statewide downward trends are in numbers of smokers, heart attacks and lung problems.

“The parade of horrors about bars closing has proven to be completely false,” said Dan Grossman, a former state senator who sponsored the 2006 Clean Indoor Air Act. “And we changed the lives of workers and the health of the state for the better.”

Even a number of smokers quizzed while taking a quick puff on a downtown sidewalk agreed.

“It’s a good thing. I don’t have to smell smoke while I eat,” said Dan Hill. “And I probably smoke less because of it.”

Of all the issues facing Colorado restaurants and bars, Jeanne McEvoy, the new director of the Licensed Beverage Association, said: “We never hear about smoking from members. It is, excuse the pun, a back-burner issue.”

Bars have not closed in droves, she said. In fact, a member recently told her even if the law was repealed, he would not allow cigarettes back in his pub.

Colorado restaurants did $300 million more in business in the third quarter of 2010 than they did in the third quarter of 2006, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Many local restaurant and bar owners built elaborate heated patios for smokers.

“It has changed how people view going out,” said Grossman. “I can now go to a favorite place and not worry about smelling like smoke or having my kids breathe all that secondhand smoke.”

Data also show the ban has been a boon to public health.

Exposure to secondhand smoke in the workplace for the average Coloradan has decreased 50 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Health and Environment.

One hundred thousand fewer people in Colorado smoked in 2010, compared to 2005, and, on average, they are smoking 20 fewer packs per year.

Hospitalizations for heart attacks in the same period decreased 17 percent, according to the Colorado Hospital Association.

The biggest health improvement likely is felt by bar and restaurant workers.

“It’s been great for us,” said Ben Jackson, the general manager at The Ritz Grill in downtown Colorado Springs. “You don’t go home stinking of smoke and have a smoker’s cough even though you don’t smoke.”

A 2006 study of non-smoking bar workers in Scotland found their respiratory problems decreased 80 percent after a smoking ban.

Beyond the health effects for his staff, Jackson said banning smoking helped the bottom line.

“Business is better. We have more people, even smokers, who stay and dance all night because it is not so smoky.”

A few hold outs still grouse about the law.

Bruce Hicks, owner of Murray Street Darts, said he lost 25 percent of his business after the ban. Then he started letting people smoke despite the law and got his business back.

He rallied other bar members to do the same but one by one they dropped out.

He has been fined dozens of times for his defiance. He opened a smoke shop in his bar to get around the regulations, but the courts found the practice illegal.

“The state has no right to tell me how to run my business,” he said. “In the long run, I’ll survive, but my customers don’t like it.”