Restaurant Smoking Law to Get New Notice

When restaurateur Scott Reed learned of the county law requiring that his Mission Viejo establishment have a separate no-smoking section, he looked as if he had just tasted spoiled fish.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t know” about the law.

The law has been on the books for 11 years. It requires restaurants in unincorporated county areas with seating capacity of 50 or more to set aside for non-smokers 20% of their seats and 20% of their floor space. Yet few restaurant operators or patrons seem to be aware of the ordinance, and no one can remember its ever having been enforced.

County officials say they hope that will change on Oct. 1.

On that date, a new county smoking law takes effect. It is aimed at county employees, not restaurants, and directs that no more than 10% of space in buildings owned or leased by the county may be set aside as smoking areas.

Same as Old Rules

The new law, passed by the Board of Supervisors last month, contains the same smoking rules for restaurants as the old one. But this time, county officials say, the rules will be publicized--if not exactly enforced--with a full-court press.

“It’s not a question of enforcement, probably, as much as it is of . . . compliance,” said Dan Didier, a deputy county counsel. “Any law, it’s hoped, would be complied with voluntarily by those people subject to the law.”

“Obviously, the sheriff can’t be asked to take guys off the robbery detail and send them out to enforce the no-smoking ordinance,” Didier said.

But county workers will start notifying restaurant owners and operators about the law.

Rex Ehling, the county public health director, said the inspectors who visit restaurants and check on kitchen cleanliness will also start letting managers know about the smoking law.

“Most of our effort here is going to be educational,” Ehling said. “We will be monitoring compliance (with the law) and reporting back to the board.”

“In an area where you have a fairly good amount of non-compliance,” Ehling said, “the best way to go is to educate people about the fact that we do have a smoking ordinance, and (about) the health effects of smoking itself, and of what we call passive smoking” (by which a non-smoker breathes others’ cigarette smoke in a room).

Restaurant owner associations say that regardless of the law, their members are moving toward separating smokers from non-smokers. They say they want to be left alone to set up separate sections voluntarily.

The restaurateurs escaped stricter controls last month, when the supervisors voted 3 to 2 against expanding the required no-smoking space to 50% of any restaurant that can seat more than 50 people.

“The county has not been very aggressive in letting businesses know that the (no-smoking law) exists,” said Gerry Breitbart, an official of the California Restaurant Assn.

“If it did, particularly in the restaurant industry, (businesses) would respond to it. They’re particularly responsive to their customers, anyway.”

Waiting for Tables

Breitbart said owners of restaurants that seat fewer than 100 people and have only one dining room worry that an inflexible minimum number of no-smoking seats could lead to situations in which patrons would have to wait for a table even if some are empty, because the free tables are in the wrong section.

“We highly recommend to all of our restaurants, whether there’s an ordinance or not, to establish a no-smoking section, and to establish it like the airlines do” by enlarging or reducing its size according to demand, Breitbart said.

He said restaurant owners have found that “the later into the evening you move, the more likely it is your customers will smoke. Early diners are nonsmokers.”

Jim Franchino, owner of Paisan’s Hot Deli in Laguna Niguel, disagreed, however. He said about half of his customers light up cigarettes after their meals, no matter when they eat.

Franchino’s establishment can seat only 20 people inside, so he is exempt from the law. He said that, as far as he is concerned, customers “can smoke their brains out in here. . . . This is the beach, and people can do whatever they want.”

Reed, general manager of a Mission Viejo restaurant that is covered by the law, says he has two dining rooms that seat about 80 people. Setting aside 16 seats for non-smokers means that “part of the no-smoking area would have to be right next to the smoking section,” he said.

Currently, Reed said, three or four customers a day ask to be seated away from smokers, and he usually can find them the table they prefer. “We’ve been able to work around it” without having a separate section, he said.

On paper, the main effect of the new ordinance will be on county workplaces, where smoking will be banned everywhere except in designated areas. Previously, such a rule applied only in buildings frequented by the public.

Yet many county employees who smoke say they do not expect to see any major change.

“It seems to me that it wasn’t that many years ago when a number of people in (a) meeting were (smokers),” said Nancy Nelson, a chief deputy probation officer. Now, she said, even when smoking is allowed in a meeting, “there are not many smoking any more.”

Nelson, who described herself as a “moderate” smoker, said much of her work involves attending meetings, and “those who smoke do find that our smoking has been cut down.”