Business is down 10% in Scottish pubs since the smoking ban went into effect in March, a poll of publicans says. About half of those responding said their regulars were visiting less often and spending less, while only 5% thought business was better.
Some people disagreed: JD Wetherspoon, which operates 40 pubs in Scotland and 650 in total, said sales were at normal levels. "It will hit profits for the first year and a half, but you have to think long-term," said its chief executive, John Hutson. "It's going to happen; you might as well make the best of it."
Of course, it may be easier for huge chains to weather a year and a half of reduced profits than it is for a local mom-and-pop operation.
Several years ago I was eating in a New York restaurant with my partner, an enthusiastic anti-smoking fascist. "This restaurant is non-smoking," he proudly proclaimed. (This was before Mayor Bloomberg's nanny state kicked into high gear and banned smoking in all restaurants and bars.) "Great," I replied. "I'm glad we're eating here. And people who like smoke can eat across the street."
But that kind of choice isn't good enough for the anti-smoking fascists. They don't want choice: they want virtue. Smoking is a sin, or at least the closest thing they can find to the concept of sin: it's unhealthy. The same people who sport bumper stickers reading "Don't Like Abortion? Don't Have One" never say "Don't Like Smoking? Avoid Bars with Smoking". No: their morality must be imposed on all.
I grew up in a smoking household, and I yield to no one - except maybe my brother and my sister - in my dislike for being around smoke. But I make choices about restaurants all the time, based on price, location, hours, parking, cuisine, quality, ambience etc. Why shouldn't smoke be one of the many considerations I weigh in choosing a bar or restaurant? There are 925,000 restaurants in America. Surely we customers could choose between them.
For bars and pubs in particular, a big problem with smoking bans is that many drinkers like to smoke. Those of us who don't smoke are prone to saying that more people would go to bars if they didn't allow smoking. But the fact that very few bars voluntarily banned smoking suggests otherwise. Many restaurants did ban smoking, or created smoke-free areas, on their own, because lots of diners object to smoke. But apparently not many drinkers do. Furthermore, bartenders say drinkers who smoke linger longer and tip better.
Evidence about the effect of smoking bans in the United States is mixed. The blogger Dave Hitt presents evidence that the bans usually reduce business. Bar revenues declined in Seattle. Combined restaurant and bar revenues were up in Montgomery County, Maryland, a very wealthy suburb of Washington, DC, but some long-established working-class bars went out of business.
That may be a common pattern: upscale restaurants and yuppie bars for the brie-and-chablis set do well, but working-class men and women still want to have a beer and cigarette. That's what one Minnesota bar owner told the Associated Press.
Dan O'Gara, owner of the St Paul bar and music venue O'Gara's Bar and Grill, said he's benefited from the Hennepin County ban because he allows smoking. But he worries he will lose customers if St Paul goes smoke-free. He said neighborhood bars would be devastated.
The blue-collar, working man's bar, which is a big thing in the Twin Cities, is probably going to be a thing of the past if this continues," O'Gara said.
And as Christopher Hitchens says, something is lost when you pick away at people's opportunities to relax, to have fun and to make their own decisions.
