It Was a Dark and Smoky Night

No doubt about it, our lawmakers burned the late-night oil Wednesday. It must have been a full agenda of hearings and committee roll calls that pushed until nearly 10 p.m. the Assembly’s vote to repeal California’s ban on smoking in bars and taverns.

Not likely. Less than one month after this first such ban in the nation took effect, the Assembly voted to end it. Like so many bills favorable to the tobacco industry, this measure somehow came to the floor for a vote long after most reporters and members of the public had gone home. The count was 42 to 24.

If the repeal becomes law, it will not go into effect until next January. But many bar, tavern and casino owners would doubtlessly take enactment of the measure as permission to ignore the current ban. The bill would suspend the ban for two years or until federal authorities set up uniform national standards to protect nonsmokers--customers as well as bartenders, waiters and other employees--from the known hazards of secondhand smoke.

The trouble with this is that bar and tavern owners already have had three years to comply with California’s 1994 law barring smoking in most workplaces. That law delayed implementation specifically to give state and federal officials time to produce indoor ventilation standards. But little progress--or effort--has resulted, and it’s far from certain that two more years would help.

The vast majority of the state’s 35,000 bars also serve food, meaning that smoke from the bar often curls across the room to those eating and serving food. The new ban protects these folks as well. Opponents of the bar law have portrayed it as an intolerable intrusion on individual rights--but on the rights of smokers only. Apparently, the rights of nonsmokers to be free from dangerous cigarette or cigar smoke is considerably less important.

Few predicted that implementation of the bar ban, the last phase of the 1994 law, would be easy. The early evidence is that many bars and customers are complying while some are not. Still, one month is hardly a fair test of this law, and repeal is not only premature but ill-advised.

This bill now moves to the state Senate, where, we hope, it will meet the skepticism and scrutiny it deserves. To his credit, incoming Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) opposed efforts last year to delay implementation of the ban. He should do so again.