Liquor License Link to Smoking Law Urged

Bars that flout California no-smoking laws should face the prospect of losing their liquor licenses, a state advisory board recommended Thursday.

The state’s Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee urged Gov. Gray Davis to direct the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to consider smoking violations when making bar licensing decisions.

Smoking violations have not figured into those decisions since the state passed the landmark California Smoke-Free Workplace Act in 1994 and expanded it in 1998 to include stand-alone bars.

About 60% of those bars comply with the act, said Dian Kiser, director of the Breath program, a statewide project of the American Lung Assn.

“All the governor has to do is sign an approval of the ABC getting involved,” said Jennie R. Cook, chairwoman of the advisory panel. “It would be good enforcement of a law that is being broken every day.”

Davis spokesman Michael Bustamante said Thursday he had not seen the recommendation but promised the governor’s office will consider it.

Alcohol Beverage Control officials, however, say they do not have enough staff to include smoking violations in their responsibilities.

“We’re already extremely low on personnel,” said department spokesman Carl DeWing. “We have 200 investigators to enforce the ABC laws of 72,000 liquor licenses in the state of California.”

Currently, when an ABC investigator encounters a bar where the no-smoking law is not enforced, the case is referred to local law enforcement, DeWing said. Penalties vary according to jurisdiction, American Cancer Society officials said.

Tom Humber, president of the National Smokers Alliance, described the advisory committee’s recommendation as proof that the state’s anti-smoking law is a failure.

“On the one hand they’re saying it’s working beautifully,” Humber said. “Now they say they have to send in the alcohol beverage Gestapo. . . . They can’t have it both ways.”

The oversight committee also called on the Legislature to direct $105 million annually to the California Tobacco Control Program, which directs spending of tobacco tax money on anti-smoking efforts. The money would come from California’s yearly share of the settlement of a lawsuit with the tobacco industry through 2025.

Cook said the funds are needed because money for anti-tobacco education derived from cigarette taxes has declined along with Californians’ consumption of tobacco products.

Consumption of tobacco products decreased by more than 50% per capita between 1988 and 1999, said committee member Dr. David Burns, a researcher at UC San Diego.

Partially as a result, funding for tobacco education derived from Proposition 99, which created a 25-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes, has nose-dived from roughly $150 million in 1991 to $83 million last year, Cook said.