Effects of year-old smoking ban still linger
Every day for the last year, Doug Fergen has turned away customers from his bar in the Moorhead Center Mall.
“It hurts. It’s not the American way,” said Fergen, owner of Vic’s Lounge.
A city smoking ban requires Vic’s to keep either smoking or minors out of his tavern. Vic’s is more bar than restaurant, so now diners coming for lunch must be of legal drinking age.
“I used to have a nice family crowd, and now I don’t anymore,” Fergen said.
Smoking bans in West Fargo and Moorhead began on this date a year ago, and some business owners say it’s been a painful year.
The ban has been devastating for the VFW in West Fargo, said Commander Bill Tuff.
“I figured it would hit and rebound a little bit, but unfortunately, we haven’t rebounded,” he said.
Tuff said business is down about 40 percent at the VFW bar, which is above its restaurant. Gaming revenue is down about 55 percent, a $800,000 drop.
West Fargo’s ban excludes businesses that had a liquor license as of Aug. 1, 2004, and that don’t allow minors.
Moorhead’s ban allows smoking in bars that don’t admit minors and in restaurant bar areas enclosed by walls from floors to ceilings.
That matches the ban Fargo voters picked last year from three choices, one of which was a full ban including bars. The Fargo ban began about a month earlier than Moorhead and West Fargo’s.
Many ban supporters said when the ordinances were enacted that they were incremental moves toward more extensive laws including bars.
The Smokefree Air for Everyone Coalition, in light of the one-year anniversary of the bans, met Wednesday to discuss its next steps.
Linda Kohls, chairwoman of the SAFE Coalition, said the group of public health groups and other ban advocates decided not to push to extend the bans in the near future.
“I don’t really see us pursuing efforts locally in the next few months,” she said, though the group will follow efforts to pass sweeping state bans in North Dakota and Minnesota.
Kohls said the coalition will work instead to gather economic data to see how area bars and restaurants have faired since the bans were put in place.
The group also hopes to gauge what public support the bans have, she said.
A study of 360 Moorhead households released in September showed that 82 percent of the city’s residents backed the bans exempting bars. Slightly more than half of those polled said bars should be included in the ordinance.
Jim Mercil, owner of the Speak Easy Restaurant in south Moorhead, said extending the bans would level the playing field for restaurants like his with full-service bars.
“That’s the only saving grace for me,” he said.
Mercil said the ban has hurt the Speak Easy’s bar business, especially after 9 p.m.
Randy Thorson, a Fargo bar and restaurant owner who helped promote the ban Fargo voters favored, said he does not think the ban should be extended to bars so soon after the public vote.
An extension to bars will be more realistic in five to seven years, said Thorson, owner of Old Broadway, Borrowed Bucks and Mr. G’s, all of Fargo.
Though she understands that a full ban would need public support, Kohls said she wishes people would focus more on the health benefits of smoking bans.
“They’re not a public opinion effort, they’re a public health effort,” she said.
Originally written By Dave Roepke,
The Forum
