Smoke Won’t Get in Patrons’ Eyes as Some Cry in Their Beers

The statewide ban on smoking in bars was only hours away Wednesday night, and Sandy Castro was beginning to panic.

“This is the last place you can sit down, relax, have a drink and a smoke,” said the 45-year-old Garden Grove bookkeeper, sipping beer and puffing a Basic Light at The Place bar in Santa Ana.

“It’s banned at work, in restaurants, at the store,” she said. “I feel like bringing my own ashtray in and sneaking a few drags in the corner. I’m desperate.”

Castro’s view was echoed by bar patrons and managers across the county this week as they prepared for the ban, which took effect at midnight.

“Customers tell me they think it’s terrible and that they’re not going to abide by it,” said Bill Tomp, owner of Bananas Restaurant & Cocktail Lounge in Fullerton and Newport Five Cocktail Lounge in Tustin. “They tell me they’re not going to stop smoking.”

Tomp and others said the ban strikes at the heart of bar culture and will do more harm than good.

“If everyone is obeying the law, where can these [smokers] go?” he said. “They come here for sociability, to see their friends and have a sandwich. It’s not going to end the bar life, but they’ll step outside and have a cigarette, they’ll flip the butt on the sidewalk and then we’ll have another problem--cigarettes all over the sidewalk. Isn’t that something?”

As California readied to take its much-discussed step to become the first state in the nation with smoke-free bars and casinos, taverns on every corner seemed to be taking a final collective drag.

Some, like Casey’s Back Alley Bar & Grill in Orange, were busy adding a patio for smokers. Others were looking for loopholes, talking to attorneys, contemplating turning themselves into a private club with fees, as the thinking goes, to beat the law and keep puffing.

The ban, which is the last piece of the state’s 1995 workplace smoking law to take effect, won’t be enforced until Friday, state Department of Health Services officials said. But many bars were already accepting the inevitable.

Bartenders have spent hours role-playing with tavern owners, figuring out just the right approach to tell people that it’s now against the law to light up.

Owners were busy Wednesday plotting how they were going to get patrons to snuff out their cigarettes come midnight, noting that there would still be a full two hours of drinking-time left.

Bars, they knew, aren’t like the other workplaces--office buildings, movie theaters, restaurants--where California has already outlawed smoking. They worried that the introduction of alcohol will make tavern smokers less reasonable. For many patrons, they reasoned, smoking is not a choice, but an addiction. They knew, too, that bars are often seen as the last bastion of social lawlessness, places where anything goes, where smoking a cigarette with your spirit-of-choice has long gone together like Waylon and Willie.

At Morton’s bar and restaurant in Beverly Hills, which caters to cigar aficionados and even features a private humidor, regulars wanted to go out in style with a self-termed “smoke-out,” planning to puff right up to the midnight deadline--and perhaps beyond.

“We were always a place where guys could come in for a big slab of beef and then hit the bar for a cigar and a single-malt scotch--but now that will change,” said restaurant general manager Don Stonebraker.

“It’s going to be a den of iniquity here on the last night, along with some sad faces. We’re all afraid our smoking regulars will drift away. They’ve been banished from the dining room into bar, and that was acceptable. Now they feel like they’re getting kicked out the door.”

Experts reject such a dark vision.

“Remember when they banned smoking in airplanes and all the hewing and crying and moaning and groaning that followed?” asked Alan Henderson, president of the American Cancer Society’s California division. “Now people don’t even think about it anymore.”

Health officials are armed with studies that show people dislike public smoking and that bars that have banned the habit have done just as well without it, thank you.

One such study found that 76% of Californians who frequent bars are bothered by secondhand smoke. Another, by the University of California, concluded that smoking bans in five cities and two counties did not hurt bar or restaurant sales.

Herm Perlmutter, supervisor for Orange County’s Tobacco Use Prevention Program, said he has heard the same complaints over the years from owners of movie theaters, restaurants and offices--and none of the dire predictions came true.

“These businesses have had plenty of time to make the transition. You’d have to be on Mars not to know this was coming,” he said.

Perlmutter said the county’s approximately 3,000 bars would have a two-hour window before they would be expected to comply, and there would be little tolerance for lawbreakers after that.

“I have talked to most code enforcement officers in the county, and almost all of them said they would be following up on the first complaint,” he said. “They view it as being important for public health.”

Complaints should be called into his office at (714) 541-1444, which will then send a letter to the business with a copy to the code enforcement officer in that city.

“I’ll be here at 8 o’clock Friday morning to answer all calls,” he said.

Natasha Lindsay, a manager of Casey’s in Orange, said getting all customers to comply all the time might not be easy.

“Almost 85% of our clientele are a smoking clientele,” she said. “A nightclub clientele is very difficult to keep under control. It means extra security.”

Normally, the nightclub employs 10 bouncers for the Thursday, Friday and Saturday night crowds. Because of the ban, they have raised the staffing to “14 to 16,” she said, “and that costs money.”

Customers who don’t comply will be asked to leave, she said.

“We’ll have to explain to them that it is the law, that the [county] health department will be checking on us, that Cal-OSHA will be checking on us,” she said. “If someone gets irate, we’ll have to treat that like any other circumstance like that. We’ll be letting them know that we may not like it, but we have to do it.”

At The Spot, customer Larry Chase said he thinks he can avoid the temptation to smoke in the bar.

“You can just walk outside if you need to,” he said. “But I like the taste of a good beer and a good smoke. . . . You can’t fix that.”

Times staff writers Shelby Grad, Nancy Cleeland and Jeff Leeds and Jose Cardenas and correspondent Julia Scheeres contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Smoking Ban Expanded

Some facts about California’s campaign against tobacco use:

* Who’s included: The prohibition applies to almost all enclosed workplaces that have employees other than the owner.

* History: The Legislature passed the smoking ban in 1994. Citing dangers from secondhand smoke, supporters, including the California Labor Federation, backed the legislation as a worker safety measure.

* Penalties: After initial confusion, the state Department of Health Services has concluded that patrons who ignore the law, as well as business owners who allow smoking in their establishments, could be subject to fines of $100 for a first violation and $200 for a second. A third violation could result in a $500 fine, plus action against the employer by state labor officials.

* Exceptions: The smoking ban does not extend to bars and casinos on Indian land, bars that are owner-operated and have no employees, tobacco retailers and establishments that are not enclosed by four walls and a ceiling.