Smoking Bans Go Far--Anchorage, Even

Barber Jerry Whitsett ducks into the Sourdough News and Tobacco shop, lights up a cigarette and puffs away, tapping the ash into his cupped hand.

Whitsett is soon joined by two other smokers in a blue haze of cigarette smoke at the front of the shop.

Shop owner Richard Burt expects his downtown store to be the “in” spot for smokers after the city’s anti-smoking ordinance goes into effect Dec. 31, especially when the temperature drops below zero.

“I guess I will be the designated smoking area,” Burt said.

Some people consider it the end of an era, another step away from the Alaska that was America’s Last Frontier.

Burt said that when he was a teenager, Anchorage was still a “wild and crazy” place where people liked to drink and dance until the bars closed at 5 a.m.

He blames the taming of Anchorage on Outsiders (the term Alaskans use for people from the Lower 48) who came in droves in the 1970s to get rich from Prudhoe Bay oil. The ones who struck it rich became politically influential and started changing things, he said.

“They should leave Alaska alone,” Whitsett said.

The ordinance will ban smoking in most workplaces, including restaurants, bowling alleys, sports arenas and pool halls.

Smoking will be allowed in most bars, businesses with four or fewer employees, tobacco retail shops and bingo parlors that have separate ventilated areas for smokers. The ordinance allows smoking in 25% of hotel and motel rooms.

Violators will be issued two warning letters. A third complaint could result in a $300 fine.

Not as Restrictive as Some Communities

Alaska, at 27.2%, is tied for fourth place among states with the highest smoking rates, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Anti-smoking ordinances also have been adopted in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Arizona cities of Mesa and Flagstaff. Maine, Vermont, Utah and Boulder, Colo., ban smoking in restaurants, while California prohibits smoking in bars as well as restaurants.

In suburban Washington, D.C., the Village Council of Friendship Heights, Md., has voted to ban smoking or discarding cigarettes even outdoors in public areas, the toughest outdoor smoking restriction in the nation.

Anchorage’s ordinance, adopted 9 to 2 by the city assembly in June, is just the latest change in the Alaskan lifestyle.

When Alaska was a territory, bars could stay open 24 hours a day. That changed after statehood in 1959, when they were allowed to remain open only from 8 a.m. to 5 a.m. And in 1981, Anchorage shortened the hours from 10 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. during the week and until 3 a.m. on weekends.

The city of nearly 260,000 has matured, said Jewel Jones, director of the city Health and Human Services Department, who moved to Anchorage in 1967.

“Things change,” Jones said. “That’s not all bad.”

But Shirley Koch, 57, owner of Allen’s Nugget Jewelry, liked Anchorage better when people had a live-and-let-live attitude. She holds a lighted cigarette between fingers covered with rings of gold nuggets, and hikes the hem of her black dress to show off her favorite tattoo: a red rose and hummingbird.

“I smoke in my own place. I dare them to come in and say I can’t smoke in my own establishment. It’s my right. If I want to suck this stuff into my lungs, well, all right,” she said.

That’s just the point, said Jenny Murray, tobacco policy coordinator for the American Cancer Society.

“Her rights stop at the beginning of my nose,” Murray said.

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On the Web:

Smokefree Anchorage: https://www.smokefreeanchorage.ak.org.