Youth-Oriented Businesses Say Smoking Ban Hasn’t Cost Them : Survey: Vast majority in county that hire or cater to youth report ‘no effect’ on sales. Another 9% say they’ve profited.

FULLERTON — The vast majority of Orange County businesses that hire or cater to youth have not lost income when anti-smoking regulations are enforced on the job site, according to a survey released Tuesday.

A survey of 189 local businesses found that 89% of those with smoking policies reported “no effect” on their income, said Gregory Robinson of Cal State Fullerton.

Robinson, a social ecologist who directed the telephone survey, said another 9% of the establishments, ranging from yogurt shops to pizza parlors, ski shops and video arcades, reported that their business actually had improved because of smoking regulations.

Only three businesses said the regulations had caused their incomes to decline “somewhat,” and none said smoking restrictions had lost them “a great deal” of income.

“The tobacco industry has spent a lot of money trying to convince people that policies regulating smoking are bad for business,” said Barbara DuBois, executive director of the Southern Coast Regional Board, an anti-tobacco organization funded by Proposition 99 cigarette tax revenue that sponsored the survey.

“This survey refutes that myth and provides strong evidence for smoke-free workplaces,” she said, adding that the board intends to distribute the findings to legislators and other policy makers.

Robinson said Orange County and San Diego County were included in the survey conducted during September and October. He said about 80% of the Orange County businesses polled had workplace policies regulating smoking, of which 70% are smoke-free and 30% restrict smoking or nonsmoking to specific areas.

Of the 189 Orange County businesses surveyed, 101 served food and 88 provided other services. The businesses either had employees aged 16 to 19 or served customers aged 10 to 17. The survey discovered, among other things, that almost 61% of the respondents, who were mostly owners and managers of businesses, “strongly favored” anti-smoking policies imposed by employers and almost 53% favored government-enforced anti-smoking ordinances.

Officials of the Tobacco Institute, a Washington-based trade organization, were not available to comment Tuesday.

Mike Rhodes, president of the Orange County chapter of the California Restaurant Assn., representing more than 600 restaurants, said the survey results don’t surprise him.

“I think young people as a group probably are more likely to support a nonsmoking atmosphere,” he said.

But Rhodes, president of Frontier Restaurants, which owns Russell’s and Knowl-Wood restaurants, said while a smoking ban may work in a family eatery, it could be damaging to “a more adult restaurant environment, which includes a lounge and/or dancing.”

He said the California Restaurant Assn. opposes bans on smoking that are adopted city by city, but supports “an outright ban on smoking in the workplace, including public places, statewide.”

“If it was a statewide ban, it would provide a level playing field and wouldn’t hurt anybody. The public would adjust its habits,” Rhodes said.

DuBois said the survey concentrated on businesses that either hire or serve youth because “the tobacco industry recently has had dramatic success in recruiting new smokers from younger and younger age groups.”

In Orange County, she said, 16% of 10th-grade boys and 13% of 10th-grade girls are smokers. She added that smoking rates start to increase in the 11th grade, “most alarmingly among ethnic youth, the population receiving the bulk of tobacco industry marketing.”

DuBois said the survey data shows when smoking restrictions were implemented in stores, restaurants and other businesses, youth were less inclined to smoke and were even discouraged from doing so. “You are changing the environment from which they pick up the habit,” she said.

In the survey, 77% of the Orange County business operators said if a person younger than 18 lit up a cigarette, he or she would “very likely” be asked to put it out.

The inclination to intervene was greatest in smoke-free businesses, where nearly 85% of respondents said they would “very likely” ask minors to stop smoking.

By contrast, only about 29% of those running establishments where smoking is permitted everywhere but in designated nonsmoking areas said they would be “very likely” to stop the young smoker.

Restricting smoking is good for business, said Dan McCoy, owner of Lonnie’s Ski Shop in Huntington Beach. He was among the 2.1% who said smoking regulations had improved business “a great deal.”

“I used to have somebody (an employee) who smoked in here and some customers said they stopped coming because the shop smelled like smoke,” McCoy said.

But McCoy said since that chain-smoking employee left in June, he has painted, otherwise “freshened up” his shop and two months ago adopted a “no smoking” policy.

McCoy said his income already has risen 25%, about 10% of which he attributes to the smoking ban.