Smoking Ban Proposed for Restaurants : Health: Measure would give L.A. the toughest regulations of any major city. An industry spokesman calls the idea ‘extreme.’

City Councilman Marvin Braude on Tuesday proposed a total ban on smoking in restaurants that would give Los Angeles the toughest anti-smoking regulations of any major city.

The measure, which requires approval by the council and Mayor Tom Bradley, is expected to bring strong opposition from restaurant owners. It is similar to one adopted by the resort town of Aspen, Colo. Currently, Los Angeles restaurants with seating for more than 50 are required to designate nonsmoking areas.

“Secondhand smoke is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States,” Braude said Tuesday. “It’s time to put to rest the notion that eating and smoking are compatible.”

Braude said he has been contemplating introducing such a ban for some time, and was moved to action by recent disclosures about the dangers of secondhand smoke.

Earlier this month, reports surfaced that the Environmental Protection Agency soon will declare secondhand smoke a known carcinogen and offer the first government estimates of the number of cases of lung cancer caused by “passive smoking.” A draft of the agency’s study concludes that smoking is responsible for more than 3,000 cases of lung cancer in nonsmokers each year, according to news reports.

Also, Braude said, a paper presented last week to the World Conference on Lung Health showed that smoking contributed to 32,000 heart disease deaths annually among nonsmokers. Braude said the “so-called right to smoke” was “nothing more than a right to inflict deadly poisons on innocent bystanders.”

Stan Kyker, executive vice president of the California Restaurant Assn., called Braude’s proposal “an extreme step” that would meet strong opposition.

“If this is really a health issue, then why are we singling out restaurants as an area to have a total ban?” Kyker said. “When you have a ban, especially in a community like the Los Angeles area, where the other cities would not be subject to this ordinance, you quite literally are telling the customer, ‘We don’t want you in the restaurants in our city.’ ”

Under a Braude-sponsored law enacted in 1987, restaurants with more than 50 seats must set aside as least half of them for nonsmokers. Smaller restaurants are exempt from the law.

Braude has pushed for a number of anti-smoking regulations, including a 1977 ban on smoking in grocery stores, theaters, hospitals and portions of meeting rooms in city facilities, and a 1984 ordinance restricting smoking in the workplace.

The prospects for passage were uncertain Tuesday.

“I don’t know what the council will do,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who 15 years ago sponsored legislation banning smoking in elevators. “It’s a close call. . . . If I vote for it, it means I will never be able to have dinner at a restaurant with my wife again.” His wife is a smoker.

A former two-pack-a-day smoker, Yaroslavsky said his sympathies are with banning smoking in all public places. “But I’m realistic enough to know that in a city this large, with powerful restaurant lobby, it’s likely to have a tough go in the council.”

“Personally, I would love it,” Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said of the proposed ban, but she was skeptical of whether the measure would pass.

Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores said she had “no idea” whether the council would support the ban.