Merchants Clear Away the Smoke : Ordinance: Restaurants, bars must comply with Long Beach’s new smoking restrictions. But those who still want to light up are hot under the collar.

The reddish glow of cigarettes went out in Long Beach restaurants, bowling alleys and employee lunchrooms this week as the city’s toughest no-smoking law to date went into effect.

The ordinance became effective Tuesday morning as City Council members validated last week’s citywide election in which voters approved the anti-smoking law by more than 2 to 1.

Throughout the city, restaurateurs put up no-smoking signs and swept ashtrays off tables--marking the end of a three-year battle to eliminate smoking in public areas and workplaces.

“The voters spoke loud and clear. The ordinance passed by a healthy margin in every single district,” said Councilman Evan Anderson Braude, who introduced the anti-smoking proposal.

After voting to accept election results, Braude went out to lunch with colleagues, he said. “I did notice that nobody was smoking that I saw or smelled. It was a nice feeling.”

The new law prohibits smoking in any eatery or workplace, including attached bars, hair salons, bowling alleys, health-care facilities and business offices. Puffing is limited to a third of the seating area in separate bars that do not share a ventilation system with a restaurant, and in a third of the patio area of restaurants.

The law does not cover any buildings under control of another governmental body. But agencies that are exempt, such as the Veterans Administration or school district, have no-smoking policies or expect to implement similar restrictions within the year.

A provision allows the council to review the law within 18 months of passage and to banish the remaining smokers from bars and patio restaurants.

Since 1991, the council has been trying to enact a no-smoking policy in public areas, but has twice came up against well-financed campaigns by the tobacco industry.

That year, council members backed away from an ordinance to ban smoking after a petition drive forced them to rescind their new law or put it to a public vote. They passed a watered-down version requiring restaurants to set aside two-thirds of their space for nonsmokers. Last year, council members tried again. They passed a no-smoking ordinance in July, then voted to put the issue on the April 12 ballot in the wake of another successful petition campaign against it.

Over the past three years, council members have repeatedly warned businesses that nonsmoking was the wave of the future and stricter laws were inevitable. Still, some restaurateurs are bristling under the law, or seeking ways to dodge it.

In the Americana Restaurant--a downtown haven for retirees who linger for hours over a bottomless cup of coffee and endless cigarettes--customers and employees spoke angrily about their constitutional rights.

Cigarettes are not illegal, waitress Loretta Miller said while she had a lunchtime burger 24 hours before the no-smoking law took effect. Three chain-smoking customers, seated at the table with Miller, grunted their agreement.

“To take away (smoking) is to take away our freedom of choice, constitutional rights,” Miller declared. “This doesn’t feel like the United States anymore.”

In Belmont Heights, Aimee Jarrels, owner and manager of the Reno Room bar, which features a neon sign out front proclaiming “Open at 6 a.m,” said she hasn’t decided how to react.

“I have a hard time believing they will have the money or manpower to enforce it,” Jarrels said. She has considered making her narrow, dark bar into a private club and charging customers 25 cents to get in, in hopes of circumventing the law.

But that won’t work, said Judy Ross, health promotion coordinator with the city’s Health Department, which is charged with enforcing smoking laws.

Private clubs are exempt from the law, but only if they declared themselves as such by July 1, 1993.

The Health Department won’t be sending out officers to check for compliance, Ross said. No city employees will be counting chairs to ensure that two-thirds of the seating in taverns is for nonsmokers. But if citizens complain about a certain eatery, the law does have teeth: Scofflaw business owners will be referred to the city prosecutor and could be charged with a misdemeanor.

The first offense carries a minimum $50 fine, with penalties being raised incrementally for subsequent violations, Ross said.

Ross doesn’t foresee a serious problem with the no-smoking laws, however. Since the 1991 law gave nonsmokers the majority of restaurant seating, there have been violations, she said. But none of those cases went as far as the prosecutor’s office.

“People are willing to comply; some of them are just unaware of the law,” Ross said. “In the past, we’ve found that 85% of the businesses complied after the first time we called them.”

Some businesses that strongly opposed the tougher ordinance when it was introduced in July have since accepted--even embraced--their nonsmoking fate. Formerly a vocal opponent to new restrictions last year, management of one of downtown’s fancier restaurants, L’Opera, was cheerful this week as the smoke cleared.

“At first we were opposing it,” said Sonia Woodruff, one of L’Opera’s managers. “We have a large Italian and Japanese clientele and we worried that a ban would change their minds about coming here. But we’re a well-established restaurant and I feel it won’t change our clientele.

“Personally, I’m really happy about it because I’m pregnant,” Woodruff said. “And before, no matter where you sat, you could smell the smoke.”

Shortly after the smoking ordinance took effect Tuesday, the council passed a resolution asking citizens not to sign a statewide petition, backed by the tobacco industry, that supports a bill that would invalidate local smoking ordinances and would institute more lenient smoking restrictions.