Bars & Clubs Oct 19, 2016 at 4:00 am

Some Bar Owners Say They Could Be Snuffed Out

Comments

1
The pub owners would do better for themselves and their clientele to call for a ban of all smoking on patios. If they have the space, they can make them comfy in the winter, like most do, this time for lovely smoke-free environment. If all the pub/restaurant patios were smoke-free, they'd get a lot more patrons. Smokers are a minority. Even know, if they have comfy outdoor patios and the word gets out that they're smoke-free, those of us who make up the majority will be more than happy to come. Finally, Alberta Street Pub is smoke-free outside!!
2
This regulation closes a "loophole" of allowing smoking in enclosed spaces (most are clearly within 10 feet of the main building - which is not legal anyway). I understand some of the bar owners being unhappy about the notification process and panic stricken about the short term loss of business. But as we know from past research on implementing the indoor clean air act, businesses weather this change and stay in business, new non-smoking customers eventually replace those that smoke (presuming they want to sit outside in the bad weather); workers and customers alike are protected from second hand smoke, and life goes on. In so far as people who smoke want to enjoy social smoking - they are being squeezed by regulations about where they can do it - but ultimately the rights of non-smokers to breathe safe air in public spaces have to be protected.
3
I see a boom in Portland's speakeasy culture.
4
It us unfortunate they were so sneaky about this.
5
Smoking is legal. People are forever going to do it. If this law has effectively outlawed almost every smoking area in the state, which maybe it has, or has tried to at least, what it does is force all the smokers onto the sidewalks. There's no place else for them to go. So now you've got children and pregnant women and babies in strollers passing through smoking areas, and you've prioritized the rights of the bar employees to breathe clean air over the rights of those folks. Does that make sense? Not to me.
6
Second hand smoke is 96% water vapor and air chemical composition SG report 1989 page 80!

The reason for the bans were never about health but the age old movement of prohibition this way they kill smoking and alcohol with the same law! That's what the plan was all along just like before in 1900-1923 when 43 states had smoking bans nearly all repealed by 1917 then came 1919 and alcohol prohibition
7
A smoking area that is outside, and has lattice work that goes waist high on two sides is not exposing anyone to second hand smoke. I am a non smoker and appreciate that there is no smoking inside, especially at music venues where I previously did not have a choice but to be exposed to secondhand smoke, but really no one wants this ridiculousness except a small number of anti smoking activists. This clearly is not about the health of non-smokers.
8
Studies show that smoking bans reduce smoking, which is good for not only the smokers but everyone else who has to breathe. You can drink alcohol, shoot heroin, snort coke, eat meat, etc. all you like, and not make others ingest as well. Not so with smoking. When smoking is no longer allowed on restaurant/bar patios, everyone can enjoy them, not just the minority that smoke.

Call those of us who value smoke-free air in public spaces militant, nazis, etc., but many of us non-smokers feel oppressed, disrespected and abused by those into inhaling and burning tobacco and are glad to patronize places that are entirely smoke-free. Like it or not, that's our future.
9
I wish that Dirk was as concerned about the health of service industry workers, as he is about the financial health of bars. According to the Oregon Health Authority, 200,000 workers are exposed to secondhand smoke at their workplace, including restaurants/bars with patios and that secondhand smoke kills 650 people a year.
But oh well, bars could lose a few patrons, so let's allow unwilling exposure to a carcinogen to continue.
10
I find it a bit hard to believe that second hand smoke is killing 650 oregonians a year. I have known a lot of people who died and the cause of death was never "second hand smoke". I have never seen an obituary that said the person died of second hand smoke. Can you name a single person killed by second hand outdoor patio smoke el cenicero, perhaps a celebrity? I sure can't.
11
@econoline unfortunately, the CDC reports that 2,500,000 have been killed by exposure to secondhand smoke. The CDC also reports that "there is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure; even brief exposure can be harmful to health" http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statisti….

These are all reasons why the Mercury should be talking about the health benefits of reducing exposure to secondhand smoke, instead of simply letting business owners complain.
12
If less than half of your friends are smokers, you lead a boring life. If you moralize at your friends to try to get them to stop smoking, you suck.

I don't smoke. And when at a bar when friends go outside to smoke, sometimes I join them and sometimes I wait for them to come back.

There is a clear distinction between being inside and being outside, and if these busybodies who make arbitrary rules have trouble telling the difference, they should spend 3 hours on a smoking porch during a cold rainy night and see if they can tell the difference between inside and outside.

And there needs to be a level of barrier between what is the bar's outdoor seating area and what is the rest of outside as there is the whole keeping the liquor away from kids.

But to be clear, I don't smoke and I really hate the tobacco companies. If all of the executives and scientists working at the tobacco companies all fell into an active volcano, I would not feel bad.
13
SHS never killed anyone please provide death certificates with cause of death as SHS or for that fact even smoking as they just don't exist!

SHS is 96% water vapor and air these anti smoking fanatics are insane to even make a claim of harm the smoke won't even make a fly leave a smokers dinner table!
14
Because letting individual businesses decide which clientele they want to attract and cater to is just too much freedom for civilians to handle. We, the wise and benevolent government you have elected to control you, have decided. That it is. Trust us.

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