Myrtle Beach update…
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Myrtle Beach city council to likely consider smoke ban
November 29, 2011
November 29, 2011
MYRTLE BEACH – Smoking may soon end in Myrtle Beach bars and restaurants.
Next month Smoke Free Horry plans to present Myrtle Beach City Council with research its done that shows the negative health impact second hand smoke has.
Some bars and restaurants that allow smoking believe a ban would drastically hurt their revenue.
“We get a lot of regulars. We also have a lot of tourists who aren’t allowed to smoke anywhere else in the country, but they smoke here and think it’s a privilege,” said Karen Marianos, bartender at Bummz in Myrtle Beach.
Marianos and fellow waitress Trese Friedemann smoke and fear a ban would kill the crowds they’re used to. “When you have a drink you generally want to have a cigarette as well,” Friedemann said. “I think it would hurt business, especially the bar business.”
Smoke Free Horry said in other cities, like Charleston, a ban actually increased business by nearly six percent since its smoke free ordinance was passed.
“The amount of people, again, who want a smoke free environment far outweighs those people that may or may not choose to come to a place that is smoke free,” said George Durant, Smoke Free Horry spokesman.
This year the Myrtle Beach area Chamber of Commerce endorsed smoke free initiatives.
It found two-thirds of hotels, bars, retail stores, and restaurants that are chamber members prefer non smoking.
“If our membership base is largely in support of a certain initiative then our board is likely going to vote to support that as well,” said Nora Hembree, MBACC.
Bummz estimated 60% of its customers light up and doesn’t believe that revenue can be replaced with people who would otherwise eat there if there was no smoking.
“We do have a lot of locals that know what its about here and I think they would really miss it,” Friedemann said.
“You should have the decision whether you [have a] smoking bar or non smoking bar,” Marianos said. “You can post it on the door – smoking [or] non smoking, and if you don’t like it you don’t have to come in.”
Smoke Free Horry presented its research to North Myrtle Beach officials last week. The group expects council to vote in the next several weeks. 42 municipalities and counties in South Carolina have some sort of smoking ban.
27 states do as well.
Myrtle Beach City Council to mull smoking ban, wind fuel, violence
July 27, 2011
By Lorena Anderson
By Lorena Anderson
Three serious presentations at Tuesday morning’s workshop gave Myrtle Beach City Council members a lot to consider – smoking, energy and violence.
“Do you want a total ban?” Councilman Randal Wallace asked Smoke Free Horry spokesman George DuRant during his presentation on why Myrtle Beach should implement smoking regulations.
“It’s what the citizens want,” DuRant said, citing a public opinion survey of 900 people showing 99 percent favored a ban.
He told the council that the hazards of secondhand smoke are “no longer debatable,” and that the group is concerned about healthy workplaces, especially for people who have no choice about where they work. “No one has the right to endanger someone’s life,” DuRant insisted.
Council members listened as DuRant talked about the number of people who die each year in South Carolina from smoking-related causes – 6,100 – and the annual $1 billion in health care costs incurred because of smoking.
Most didn’t have questions and no one was ready to take action at Tuesday’s meeting, but Wallace said he doesn’t feel comfortable dictating what business owners can and cannot do.
Mayor John Rhodes said he feels it should be up to the business owners to decide, but Smoke Free Horry organizers said they hope Myrtle Beach will join the 41 other S.C. municipalities that have enacted smoking bans, including Surfside Beach.
Business in cities such as New York and San Francisco that have enacted smoking bans, DuRant said, have seen an average of a 5.9 percent increase in business. He said the statistics come from a variety of sources including the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Surgeon General, and several others.
Smoke Free Horry states its goals are to protect people from secondhand smoke, prevent young people from starting to smoke, and helping people quit smoking. The group was developed by S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, Shoreline Behavioral Health Services and the S.C. Tobacco Collaborative.
Council members also heard a plea from proponents of offshore wind turbines to consider being a leader in the wind-farming industry.
Toni Reale from the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy; Elizabeth Kress from Santee Cooper; and Paul Gayes, director of the Center for Marine and Wetland Studies, made their case, showing what it might look like if there were wind turbines off the Grand Strand coast.
“South Carolina has some of the best wind resources anywhere,” Reale said. She pointed out benefits such as there being no risk of a catastrophic incident, no need for mining, no air pollution and no water consumption.
Kress acknowledges that there is fear among the public that turbines will ruin the view from the oceanfront, but said here, the water is so shallow for such a long distance, the turbines can be placed much farther from shore.
At Monday’s wind energy forum in Myrtle Beach, Reale presented information from a final report by the state’s Wind Energy Production Farms Feasibility Study Committee.
It estimates S.C. would need to produce 3.3 gigawatts of power to meet the national goal of having 20 percent of the country’s electricity needs wind-generated by 2030.
The study claims the project would result in 15,500 temporary jobs associated with wind farm production, and an additional 3,200 permanent positions needed to operate the turbines.
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates there is between 1 and 5 gigawatts of electricity off the Grand Strand’s coasts.
That’s between 1,000 and 5,000 megawatts, Reale said, and one megawatt can power anywhere from 500 to 1,000 homes.
Findings from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a program of the Department of Energy, estimates South Carolina has nearly 130,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy potential, enough to provide more than 260 percent of the state’s current electricity demand.
“There are lots of environmental reasons to do it,” Gayes said, “but it’s an economic boon.” He cited the opportunity for manufacturing parts for the turbines here, too, which seemed to interest Rhodes, a proponent of diversifying the area’s economy by luring more industry.
Finally, civic activist Bennie Swans presented a plan called “Reaching Through the Cracks,” which has been used in larger cities to try and steer young people away from bad choices and help those who have already made some get back on track.
It’s a community effort, though, which requires help from local governments, courts, police agencies, schools, civic groups, churches, mental health agencies, addiction-treatment groups and families. It involves gun buy-backs, violence awareness efforts, mentoring, outreach, education and more.
“Take the Booker T. Washington neighborhood, with its 3,000 people,” Swans said. “There have been eight murders. If there were eight young people who took their own lives, everyone would be scrambling to find a solution.”
Swans asked if Myrtle Beach would lead the way, and offered emotional pleas from residents whose children have been killed or injured in violent incidents, including Barbara Hightower, who told how her 24-year-old daughter was murdered “execution style” in Myrtle Beach.
Swans said he already has the endorsement of 15th District Solicitor Greg Hembree and County Council Chairman Tom Rice, but Council members Susan Grissom Means and Phil Render said the county would have to make a commitment to financial and staff help before they would agree to do the same.
“It’s going to require buy-in from all these agencies,” city manager Tom Leath said. “In some cases, you have to get them to change the way they do things” like pre-trial interventions, diversion programs and probation.
Leath suggested that Rice and Rhodes use their offices to bring the leaders of all the agencies and groups together to determine “how are we going to do this?”Rhodes agreed he would contact Rice and begin the process.
The most promising aspect, Means said, is that the program works with young children. “That’s where we’re going to change things,” she said.
