Salem Update
Indoor smoking ban could expand
February 17, 2007
STEVE LAW
STEVE LAW
Cigarette smoke blows constantly into Sarah Morrow’s face as she pours drinks at Magoos Sports Bar.
So when the 23-year-old Salem bartender goes out drinking with her husband, they drive to Corvallis, where smoking is banned in bars.
“You go to Corvallis and it’s so nice,” Morrow said. “You don’t come home smelling like an ashtray.”
Morrow is one of 35,000 Oregonians exposed to cigarette smoke while working indoors. An unknown number of them are part of the estimated 800 Oregonians who die each year from breathing second-hand smoke from other peoples’ cigarettes.
Bartenders in smoky bars can breathe the equivalent of two smoked cigarettes each hour, nearly a pack for an eight-hour shift, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In 2001, the Republican-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber agreed to ban smoking at indoor workplaces except taverns, bars at restaurants, bingo parlors and bowling alleys. Corvallis, Eugene and Philomath, which had gone smoke-free, were allowed to keep their ordinances, but other cities were barred from following their lead.
Climate changed
Now anti-tobacco groups are pushing bills in the Legislature that would remove the exemptions in the 2001 law.
They are emboldened by Washington voters’ recent approval of an indoor smoking ban, plus the takeover of Oregon’s Legislature by Democrats less sympathetic to tobacco and allied business lobbies.
“I’m very much for that bill,” Morrow said.
Ban disputed
Ten feet away, Salem resident Mike Smith sat puffing a cigarette while drinking beer with three buddies.
“I don’t think that’s fair,” Smith said of the proposed smoking ban in bars. “There’s other places they can go to where hardly anybody smokes,” he said. “They got the right to not smoke; I got the right to smoke.”
Bill Perry, a lobbyist for the Oregon Restaurant Association, doesn’t dispute that secondhand smoke is unhealthy. But he said people know that they will find drinking, smoking and perhaps gambling when they go inside a bar.
“I don’t care if you’re an employee or anybody else, they’re not expected to be a healthy atmosphere.”
A coalition of the Oregon lung, heart and cancer societies counters that 35,000 workers shouldn’t have to breathe cancer-causing chemicals while working. They have proposed two bills in the Senate and House. The Senate Judiciary Committee held the first hearing on the measure Friday.
Senate Bill 571 bans smoking in bars, restaurants, bowling alleys and bingo halls, but permits it outside if more than 25 feet from the nearest doorway. House Bill 2571 is identical, except that it allows outdoor smoking if more than 10 feet from the doorway.
Workers affected
A veteran Salem restaurant worker, who asked not to be identified out of fear of being punished by her employer, said she developed asthma after working for years amid secondhand smoke. She said that on two or three occasions she had to go to the emergency room for treatment.
“Just the smell sends my asthma into craziness,” she said.
Oregon bartenders and wait staff can make decent wages because of tips that come on top of the state’s $7.80 minimum wage. That’s the second-highest in the country, $2.65 more than the federal minimum wage. And Oregon, unlike many states, does not allow tips to count toward the minimum wage.
“I haven’t quit because of financial reasons,” she said. “If I leave tomorrow, I’m unemployed.”
She worries about her fellow workers, many of them women trying to raise families.
“They can’t go anywhere and make the money they do as single parents,” she said.
Salem resident Rick Clingman, who sings and plays bass in The Mitch Lies Duo, won’t take any more gigs inside smoky bars.
“My dad, who was a musician, died of emphysema at age 59, and I won’t want to follow that path,” Clingman said.
“The facts are in. That stuff is poison,” he said of cigarette smoke. “You got to be concerned about the people who bartend and waitress and those type folks. If they’re not smokers, that’s really bad news for them.”
Wendy Watson, a Eugene bartender for 16 years, worked in smoky bars and then in smokefree bars after Eugene passed its ordinance.
She said she noticed that her frequent bouts with bronchitis disappeared once smoking was banned.
“Whenever you got a cold, it didn’t last the entire season,” she said. “It wasn’t like a whole season of hacking and coughing.”
Lottery at issue
Perry warns that banning smoking could have an unforeseen impact on the Oregon Lottery revenues, because smokers might spend less time at video poker and slots machines — a key draw to many bars and restaurants.
Corvallis bars saw a drop in video poker revenue when the city banned all indoor smoking.
Perry estimated a loss to the state budget of $100 million to $150 million.
Others note that Corvallis gamblers could go to neighboring towns that allowed smoking at bars, so a total ban will have less or no impact.
Jim Eastridge, the owner of Magoos, predicts a dent in sales from alcohol, food and video lottery.
But he figures that he could accommodate smokers outside if the House version passes. Like some of his Washington counterparts, Eastridge could add outdoor heating to make sidewalk drinking and dining more hospitable.
“I kind of see the handwriting on the wall — that it’s coming,” he said.
Charles Faulk, a smoker and retired doctor from Salem, said a better solution is to have smoke-free bars and others where smoking is allowed. Forcing the business owner to turn away smokers is akin to unfair land-use laws that rob people’s property rights, Faulk said.
“I don’t think the non-smoker has the right to go into private property and tell that person what they can or cannot do with that property,” Faulk said. “I believe the worker can go somewhere else. They may not choose to, but life is full of choices.”
Watson cringes when she hears that argument. Bartenders and wait staff could never complain about the smoke before Eugene banned it, because their jobs paid well and there were always people ready to take their places, she said.
People wouldn’t say that, Watson said, about workers exposed to asbestos on the job.
