Smokers’ Group to Lead Effort to Smother Ban

The National Smokers Alliance today is launching a campaign in California aimed at stopping a state law that will ban smoking in bars starting next year.

The organization, based in Alexandria, Va., and funded mainly by tobacco companies, says it will mail posters and petitions (in the form of coasters) to more than 5,000 bars and taverns in the state.

By informing bar owners and amassing signatures of support from customers, the group hopes to find backing in the legislature to change the state’s year-old anti-smoking law.

The ban, one of the strongest in the nation, prohibits smoking in most indoor workplaces, including restaurants. For now, the law exempts free-standing taverns as well as bars in restaurants. But that grace period expires next January.

Some bar operators, fearful of losing business, welcomed the campaign.

“It will kill our business,” said Joe Tramte, a longtime bartender at Molly Malone’s, a tavern in Los Angeles where the National Smokers Alliance is expected today to announce its campaign. “This is a bar, this is not some place where the Sisters of Mary hang out,” he added.

Health policy analysts said they were unaware of any pending legislation to amend the antismoking law. But Kevin Goebel, an associate at Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, a Berkeley group that has fought against the dangers of secondhand smoke for 20 years, said he would not be surprised if such a bill was introduced.

Noting that the tobacco industry is a major political contributor in California, Goebel said of the campaign: “They will get their voice heard.”

Goebel, however, took issue with a campaign statement that the antismoking law will wreak economic havoc on bars and taverns. Goebel said 20 counties and cities in the state already ban smoking in bars, and establishments in those places have not withered away.

Over the last year, experts said, most businesses have adjusted quietly to the antismoking law. But a number of restaurant owners and operators of bowling alleys, pool halls and cafes have reported a drop in customers since the anti-smoking measure took effect.

Allan Rastedt, owner of Tin Lizzie Saloon in Costa Mesa, said most of his customers smoke and most of them know what will happen in 1997. “I’m going to turn my bar into a private club” if the campaign fails, he said.

The state law gives an indefinite exemption to private smokers’ lounges as well as parts of hotels, tobacco shops and certain warehouse facilities. Gambling halls, now also exempt, will be covered by the law next January.

The National Smokers Alliance, formed in 1993 largely as a result of ever-stringent antismoking laws, says it has 3 million members, including 400,000 in California. Its corporate sponsors, which number fewer than 50, include tobacco firms such as Philip Morris Cos. Inc. and Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. as well as Fluor Daniel Inc. of Irvine.