Smoke Hits Fan for San Diego Bar Owners

Bar owners beware: The city is targeting violators of the state smoking ban.

Beginning this spring, San Diego officials plan to threaten bar owners with arrest if they fail to show up in court to answer to violations.

For months, undercover vice squads have routinely patrolled bars in the city to weed out scofflaw bar owners and issue citations that carry fines of up to $270.

Enforcement is left up to local entities, resulting in spotty compliance. Some bars statewide fail to post “no smoking” signs, in violation of the state’s 15-month-old law aimed at protecting workers from secondhand smoke by prohibiting smoking in bars.

Michael Rivo, a chief deputy in the city attorney’s office, is in favor of upgrading smoking violations to make them misdemeanors.

“In my opinion, the violation against the bar owners should be a misdemeanor,” Rivo said. “If it were, meaning the owner had the potential of going to jail . . . there would be deterrence.”

Under the new pilot program, detectives will go to bars and restaurants and refer violations to city attorneys. The city attorney’s office will then send bar owners a letter notifying them charges were filed. City officials can issue an arrest warrant for bar owners who refuse to show up in court.

Stephen Zolezzi, spokesman for the Food and Beverage Assn.of San Diego, said bar owners do try to enforce the law, but are sometimes confronted by belligerent smokers. “Occasionally you get a customer who comes in and says, ‘I always smoked in bars and I am not going to stop now because of this stupid law,’ and there’s a confrontation,” Zolezzi said.

Many bar owners statewide support efforts to overturn the ban, saying they have lost business because of it. The latest repeal measure, one of several unsuccessful bills over the last two years, was rejected Wednesday by the Assembly labor committee.

Debra Kelley, vice president of the American Lung Assn. of San Diego, said surveys show the ban is popular, but “we have documented there is a compliance problem among small bar owners.”