Ban on Bar Smoking Is Target of Protests Staged in 5 Cities

His portrait hangs on the wall of Molly Malone’s pub among dozens of other regulars, shrouded in a black veil of remembrance: the late Gerard Clenaghan, loyal customer, Scotch drinker and cigarette smoker to the bitter end.

On Thursday, half a dozen bar owners and bartenders from across Los Angeles gathered beneath Clenaghan’s wizened gaze inside the Fairfax Avenue pub to protest the 8-week-old statewide smoking ban in California’s 36,000 bars, nightclubs and casinos.

Like the others, Molly Malone’s co-owner Damian Hanlon sat at the bar, fuming over the law he says is killing business by driving away good, paying (smoking) customers like Clenaghan and replacing them with non-tipping, barely drinking nonsmokers.

“If Gerry could see this happening here today, he’d roll over in his grave, he would,” said Hanlon in a signature Irish brogue, pointing up at the portrait of Clenaghan, cigarette in hand. “He’d walk right in here, light up, and say ‘Damn them all!’ ”

One by one, as television cameras rolled and reporters looked on wide-eyed, bar owners and their staff took turns describing how the smoking ban has slashed business by as much as two-thirds, how difficult the ban is to enforce and how they have been forced to allow angry smokers to smoke anyway, or risk losing their livelihood.

They spoke out. They complained. They defiantly lit cigarettes.

Hollywood bartender Bob Montoya, nursing a Budweiser and a shot of whiskey, said: “This crap keeps up any longer, I’m gonna be living out of my car.”

The news conference, and four others like it staged Thursday in cities from San Diego to Sacramento, was sponsored by the National Smokers’ Alliance, a nonprofit, tax-exempt, tobacco industry-backed group based in northern Virginia.

Assisting the group is one of the world’s largest public relations firms, Burson-Marsteller, which has a long-standing account with the tobacco industry and is renowned for its ability to generate news coverage.

Critics say media blitzes like the one at Molly Malone’s are part of a highly sophisticated campaign by Big Tobacco, holding forth the little-guy bar owner as a victim of too much government regulation.

One Burbank bar owner present Thursday acknowledged that she was sent last month to a Las Vegas convention sponsored by a major cigarette manufacturer and told ways to publicly protest the smoking ban.

But others steadfastly denied that they were influenced by the tobacco lobby, saying instead that they were speaking out against an unfair law, the last part of landmark legislation against workplace smoking to take effect.

“Nobody paid me any money to come up here,” Hanlon said. “I’m here on my own to tell you people that this law is just killing me.”

Gary Auxier, senior vice president of the National Smokers’ Alliance, acknowledged that, at least in part, the tobacco lobby was behind the efforts of his group.

Along with about 40 other corporate sponsors, he said, his organization received funding from three major tobacco manufacturers, including Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard.

“The problem is real whether or not we’re involved,” Auxier said. “We could not drum this up. This has been one of the easier campaigns we’ve been involved in.”

Since December, one month before the law’s Jan. 1 enactment, the alliance has used mail, telemarketing and public relations specialists, as well as a slick World Wide Web site, to reach thousands of California bar owners. They have heard back from about 2,300, Auxier said.

“Our pitch was, ‘If you’re interested in fighting back, we’re here to help,’ ” he said. “And we’ve followed through with signage for their bars, postcards to send to their representatives in the state Legislature that say ‘I’m a constituent, not a criminal.’ ”

Last month, the campaign won an early victory when the state Assembly initially approved a bill that would rescind the prohibition and permit smoking in bars and casinos at least until 2001. The Senate has yet to take up the bill.

Many bar owners at Molly Malone’s said they have thrown up their hands over being placed in the position of “smoking cop” and have allowed patrons who insist on smoking to light up.

“People were getting belligerent,” Hanlon said. “After we told them to stop, they were putting their cigarettes out on the carpet or going into the bathroom to smoke anyway. So, we finally gave up and put the ashtrays back out.”

Hanlon said he has gone from serving 20 barrels of Guinness Stout a month to just 12. “That’s a lot of sales tax these government types are robbing themselves of,” he said.

Danny George, owner of the Middle East Connection in Burbank, put it succinctly: “I pay my taxes. I make the rules in my bar, not the government.”

He says the law cost him $30,000 in January alone.

“Listen, if you don’t like cigarette smoke, don’t come to my bar, stay the hell out. We don’t need you. Our business is based around people who smoke. They spend money.”

The bar owners questioned a recent American Cancer Society study which found that 76% of Californians who frequent bars are bothered by secondhand smoke.

“Who did they talk to? Not my customers,” George said. “Everybody who comes to my bar is a smoker. They certainly didn’t come to my place for this study.”

George said the law has cost him money in strange ways: Some scofflaws have taken the opportunity to go outside, supposedly for a smoke, and then high-tail it--stiffing the bar on their bill.

Kammie Caudillo, co-owner of Crazy Jack’s Country Bar and Grill in Burbank, said the anti-smoking law’s varied interpretations have inspired even more insanity.

One rainy day, she said, a Burbank city licensing inspector came into her bar and forced about three dozen patrons to go outside to smoke.

“Twenty minutes later, two Burbank cops come by and tell everyone to go back inside, because, in Burbank, standing outside a bar for a cigarette is loitering,” she said.

“So I brought everybody back in to finish their smokes. Because the smoking fine was less than the loitering fine.”

Los Angeles City Fire Capt. John Kitchens, the smoking enforcement officer for the city of Los Angeles, acknowledged that the new law is confusing, especially when it comes to a citizen reporting a bar violation.

Kitchens complained that the city attorney’s office has shown insufficient aggressiveness in response to complaints. A spokeswoman for the agency did not return a reporter’s phone calls.

Bar owner Hanlon called the law baffling in its unfairness.

“Next thing, they’re gonna be having me tell my customers they have to smoke and drink outside,” he said.

He motioned to the portrait of former regular Clenaghan, an elderly man who friends say died of asthma last November and was buried along with his rosary, a copy of the Racing Form and a pack of cigarettes.

“Poor old Gerry,” he said. “He’s probably looking down at all this nonsense and saying ‘Hell, I’m glad I’m dead.’ ”