Effect of Smoking Bans Studied
A new study concludes that laws preventing smoking in bars have no adverse economic impact on the bars.
The study, to be published today in the American Journal of Public Health, arrives just two months before a new California statute banning smoking in bars takes effect Jan. 1, 1998.
Co-written by staunch anti-tobacco advocate Stanton A. Glantz, a professor at UC San Francisco Medical School, the study will probably be controversial. Glantz is one of the industry’s fiercest critics, perhaps best known for the 1995 book “The Cigarette Papers,” a detailed attack on the industry, based primarily on internal documents stolen from Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. by a paralegal working for a cigarette company law firm.
Earlier this year, the National Smokers’ Alliance, an industry-funded group, issued a report attacking a similar study in 1994, by Glantz and research associate Lisa R.A. Smith. And in July, Californians for Scientific Integrity, a new group with tobacco industry support, filed a suit contending that Glantz skewed the data in the earlier study.
UC attorneys contend that the suit is meritless. A hearing on the university’s motion to have the case thrown out is scheduled for Nov. 20 in Sacramento County Superior Court.
The new study reaffirms the 1994 report. Glantz and Smith examined the first seven California locations with smoke-free bar ordinances--Anderson, Davis, Redding, San Luis Obispo and Tiburon, as well as Santa Clara and Shasta counties--and compared them to areas without ordinances. The areas were matched for population, income, smoking prevalence and geography.
Utilizing sales tax records, the study found that when compared to the locations with no such laws, the ordinances had no significant effect on the percentage of total retail sales that went to eating and drinking places.
“Legislators and government officials can enact health and safety regulations to protect patrons and employees in restaurants and in bars from the toxins in secondhand tobacco smoke without fear of adverse economic consequences,” Glantz and Smith wrote.
Only one city, Anderson, a town of 8,875 in Northern California, reported any drop in revenue after the smoking ban. Anderson experienced a 0.7% drop in retail sales attributable to bars. But that was well within the range of the city’s normal business fluctuations, according to the study.
The new study is accompanied by a strongly worded editorial by Mervyn Susser, editor of the American Journal of Public Health, defending Glantz’s research. The editorial lambastes the Smokers’ Alliance critique of his earlier study, describing that attack as “a melange of scientifically inadmissible manipulations of data to obtain a desired result.”
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Susser noted that the one error uncovered by the Smokers’ Alliance in Glantz’s previous study--the dates when a few cities’ smoking bans went into effect were wrong--did not have any significant impact on the study’s conclusions.
The Smokers’ Alliance leveled another attack on Glantz’s new work Monday. “Even a cursory analysis reveals . . . myriad . . . factual errors and misrepresentations, if not outright fraud.”
For example, the Smokers’ Alliance said that “Tiburon has too few bars from which to draw meaningful economic conclusions.” The Alliance also said that between Oct. 27 and Nov. 1 members of its staff visited every bar and restaurant open to the public within the unincorporated portions of Santa Clara County that were included in the study. “Not one owner or manager had any knowledge of the ordinance and not one could be found who was enforcing it. Once again, the real world intrudes on Glantz’s advocacy research,” the Virginia-based Alliance said in a statement issued by spokesman Gary Auxier.
Glantz was on a backpacking trip and unavailable for comment. But his co-author Smith said that their study had been peer-reviewed, as had the earlier one. She stressed that “it’s based on sales tax figures--the best known source of objective information on the effects of smoking restrictions on restaurant revenues.”
The lawsuit challenging Glantz’s research, filed in July, alleges that public funds were used improperly in supporting the 1994 study. Named as defendants are UC, the Board of Regents and the state Department of Finance. Although Glantz is not a named defendant, the suit contends that he violated state law by improperly using the university’s name, time, staff facilities and resources to lobby local legislative bodies concerning smoking issues and on grass-roots lobbying.
The suit seeks a permanent injunction barring the alleged activities and is asking that any university money that furthered Glantz’s research be returned to the taxpayers, according to attorneys representing the plaintiffs.
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However, UC attorney Christopher Patti contends that the state law in question does not apply to research done at a university or prevent expressions of opinion or descriptions of research conducted by professors at a public university. “The real intent of the lawsuit is to muzzle Glantz,” Patti said.
On Friday, a Sacramento Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order barring Glantz from destroying any tobacco-related material in his files or in his computer. In addition, the order compels Glantz to seal the hard drive of his computer.
Patti contends that the order is overly broad, in particular the provision relating to the computer. “That would stop Stan from doing any work,” he said. The order will be the subject of a further hearing on Nov. 20.
