People Ban: TN State Update Page 3

Read Newest Articles:? TN State Update Page 4

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Humphrey: What about that cigarette stomp?
By Tom Humphrey
Sunday, October 7, 2007?
To dramatize the state’s new smoking ban at a media event last week, Gov. Phil Bredesen pulled a cigarette our of his suit pocket, tossed it on the ground and stomped.
The cigarette, unlit, was one of those long, skinny types. The wind blew it a few inches on the parking lot pavement, and the governor, as the TV cameras recorded the action, missed on his first tromping attempt.
But he smeared it on the second try. Then Bredesen daintily picked up the remains and handed them to an aide, sidestepping any litterbug accusations tainting his symbolic kicking of the butt.
On first blush, this might seem the goofiest gubernatorial gimmick since big, bald Ned McWherter held a dinky little golden bell in his hand, then waved it up and down before TV cameras to “ring out for the children” in a display of support for education reform.
But perhaps it is better seen as another indication of the new, bold second-term Bredesen striving for dramatic flare as he works to build a legacy. The stomping was apparently his own idea, leaving some staffers a bit disconcerted.
There are some troubling aspects of the episode. For example, it is reliably reported that Bredesen had an aide mooch the cigarette from a waitress at the restaurant where the media show was being conducted.
Thus, multi-millionaire Phil’s foot was crushing a cigarette purchased by a working woman paying new, higher taxes and subject to arrest if she imported them from Kentucky. With cigarettes going at about $3.50 a pack, the single smoke was worth about 17.5 cents.
Was this a political contribution and, if so, will the governor – who has in the past made a point of reporting all donations, regardless of how small – list it on his next disclosure?
Or was it a gift, indicating special treatment of a particular elected official in violation of the general ban on gifts included in the state’s ethics laws?
The governor, of course, could avoid these troubling questions by buying his own cigarettes and paying the higher taxes, which, as you may recall, were approved to support education.
Then a statewide tour would be appropriate. At every town, the governor could hold a media event, pull out his pack of Virginia Slims, toss one on the ground and apply foot while reciting a new slogan: “Stomp one out for the kids!”
If this caught on with other nonsmokers, there could be statewide stomp-out parties, boosting sales and state revenue from the cigarette tax. As you may have heard, cigarette tax revenues were $14 million short of expectations during the first month of the new 62-cents-per-pack tax rate.
This would be fighting against tobacco while boosting state revenue for the children at the same time.
It would resolve the dilemma now facing our state of waging war on cigarettes while depending on them for revenue.
In other words, our governor is pretty darn clever. As he is prone to say, folks ought not see a problem as being resolved in one of two ways – say the Republican way or the Democratic way – but should always seek a third way.
Yes, this is the bold new Bredesen. There should be more symbolic and dramatic gubernatorial gestures in the future.
For example, the governor made a mistatement a while back in saying that some new and tougher laws on drunken driving – recommended by a task force he appointed – had passed the Legislature. They hadn’t but will be up for consideration next year.
The new, bold Bredesen should hold a news conference and crush an empty beer can against his head just before stepping into his car.
This would dramatize his stance against mixing alcohol and driving. And perhaps serve as a reminder, rather like tapping your head to recall a thought, that the bill hasn’t passed yet.
The anti-obsesity campaign, another awareness-raising venture that has Bredesen’s blessing, raises another possibility.
Call it Trash the Trans-Fat.
Imagine the inspiration of seeing our governor pull out a bag of glazed donuts, take one out, rip it to shreds, crush it into a ball and toss it in a big trash can as the TV cameras roll.
Naturally, he would then pull out a carrot and munch on it while fielding questions about fighting fat.
Tom Humphrey, chief of the News Sentinel’s Nashville bureau, may be reached at 615-242-7782 or tomhumphrey3@aol.com.
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Posted by nycclash on October 7, 2007 at 2:48 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Love the wit. Well done.
As for Gov. Bredesen, it would have been more accurate if he threw a smoker down on the floor and stomped on his face. Cigarettes don’t smoke themselves. People do. Unless the governor wants to start a new false claim that unlit cigarettes are dangerous too? What? They’ll poke an eye out?
And so the implication is more of the new and approved hate campaign. It’s open season on smokers. There are plenty of incidents of smokers being assaulted verbally and physically and more who just need that nod that it’s okay to begin doing the same. The governor’s behavior sanctions it. And the disturbing part is that he probably wouldn’t see anything wrong with it once the message his behavior sends was pointed out to him.
Audrey Silk
Founder, NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment (NYC C.L.A.S.H.)
Brooklyn, NY

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Statewide smoking ban goes into effect today
Law getting mixed reactions from business owners, public

October 1, 2007
By Tom Humphrey (Contact)

EXCEPTIONS TO TENNESSEE’S NEW SMOKING BAN
•?Private homes, private residences and private motor vehicles, unless used for child care.
•?Non-enclosed areas of public places including open air patios, porches or decks; any that are enclosed by garage-type doors when all such doors are open; and any that are enclosed by tents or awnings with removable sides or vents when all such sides or vents are removed or open. Smoke must not reach areas where smoking is prohibited.
•?Venues that restrict access to people who are at least 21 years old.
•?Private businesses with three or fewer employees, where smoking may be allowed only in an enclosed room not accessible to the general public. Smoke must not reach areas where smoking is prohibited.
•?Private clubs.
•?Smoking rooms in hotels and motels; no more than 25 percent of rooms in a hotel or motel may be designated as smoking rooms.
•?Tobacco manufacturers, importers and wholesalers.
•?Retail tobacco stores that prohibit minors.
•?Nursing homes and long-term-care facilities, which are subject to the policies and procedures established by those facilities.
•?Commercial vehicles when the vehicle is occupied only by the operator.
Source: Tennessee Department of Health
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NASHVILLE — With a new statewide ban on smoking taking effect today, Douglas Benton planned to celebrate by dining in restaurants for breakfast, lunch and supper with family and friends.
“This is a great, great day for Tennessee,” said the Alcoa anti-smoking activist. “It is a monumental thing for the betterment of people’s lives. They will live better and longer without second-hand smoke.”
Rebecca Smith, however, doesn’t like the idea of government “trying to make me feel like I’m doing something wrong” by lighting a cigarette after a meal.
“I will not spend my money in a restaurant where they don’t allow smoking,” said the Crossville mother. “We keep giving away more and more of our rights and, before long, this is not going to be a free country any more.”
Tennessee’s “nonsmokers protection act” has several exceptions. For example, the smoking ban does not apply to businesses with three or fewer employees or restaurants and bars that require customers to be 21 or older.
Still, it does cover most public places and marks a major change for a tobacco-producing state that generally has been liberal in permitting puffing.
“I thought it would take at least 10 years for this to happen,” said Benton, who in 2005 founded a group called No Smoking In Restaurants.
Approved by the Legislature in May, the effective date of the smoking ban was delayed until today, with lawmakers saying they wanted to give everyone time to prepare.
Further, state Health Commissioner Susan Cooper said authorities will go light on enforcement as people adjust to the new law. Violators, both individuals and businesses, can expect written warnings rather than financial penalties — at least for now.
“You’re not going to see the smoking police come out,” Cooper said. “We’re going to use the first several months of this to help educate people. We believe people want to comply with the law, and we’ll work with them to help that process.”
The Department of Health will be responsible for enforcing the law in businesses that it inspects already, including restaurants and other businesses ranging from child care facilities to tattoo parlors.
The Department of Labor and Workforce Development will enforce the law in other places where people work.
Neither enforcement agency is hiring new workers to bolster enforcement. But agency inspectors, who visit most workplaces as part of their regular jobs, will be checking on compliance in the process, Cooper said.
For a person who puffs in the wrong place, the law provides a $50 fine.
For businesses that wrongfully allow smoking, the law requires only a warning on the first offense. For the second offense in a 12-month period, the fine is $100. For third and subsequent offenses, the fine is $500.
Those who want to report violators can do so starting today through the Department of Health’s Web site, health.state.tn.us, or by calling 800-293-8228, the commissioner said.
The department also is offering assistance to those who want to stop smoking through another number, 800-784-8669.
Surveys indicate that about 27 percent of adult Tennesseans, or about 1.6 million people, are smokers, the commissioner said. That is one of the highest percentages in the nation, she said.
The law has required restaurants and bars to decide whether they will ban customers under 21 years of age or ban smoking. While no one has taken a survey, Cooper and others said it appears that most have opted to ban smoking.
For example, Jennifer Nelson, a bartender at Old College Inn on Cumberland Avenue in Knoxville, said the establishment is banning smoking — except in an open-air patio area capable of seating about 25 people.
Nelson said she was concerned that the ban would reduce the number of customers, but “we’ll just have to wait and see.”
On the other hand, Joan Wilson, who owns The Hitching Post in Clinton, bans those under 21 and will allow smoking to continue. Most of her patrons are smokers, she said.
Wilson said the idea of a smoking ban “really, really makes me angry.”
“I just don’t think it’s right that they should be able to tell me what to do in my own business,” she said. “Smokers are being persecuted. Higher taxes and now this.”
The law that passed the Legislature actually was a compromise. Gov. Phil Bredesen and some legislators pushed a bill that would have been much stricter, providing fewer exceptions.
Bredesen said earlier this year that he sees the law as a “good first step” and hopes it can be strengthened in the future. But Lydia Lenker, spokeswoman for the governor, said any discussion of changes in the law would be “premature” and that Bredesen also believes new programs should be allowed to work.
Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, who was Senate sponsor of the bill that is now law, said lawmakers should wait “until everybody is acclimated to the law we have now” before making any changes. That will take at least four or five years, he said.
Cooper said that, as health commissioner, she would like to see exceptions repealed as steps toward “an ideal world where we would have a smoke-free Tennessee.”
“But you have to balance that with reality,” she said. “I think it will be nice to see where we go with the legislation that has passed.”
Rick Johnson, senior vice president of Ruby Tuesday, said the nationwide chain already has adapted to similar laws in other states with no real problems. As a “kid-friendly” business, Johnson said there was no real consideration of banning those under 21.
“We haven’t seen it have an impact on our business (in other states),” Johnson said. “If it’s applied across the board, it doesn’t keep people from coming to a restaurant they enjoy coming to.”
Tom Humphrey may be reached at 615-242-7782.

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Butt Out
After decades of failed attempts, the tobacco state of Tennessee is finally about to enact its first workplace anti-smoking law on Oct. 1.
Patrons may breathe easier, but how will business owners cope?
by Mike Gibson
Photos by Sheena Patrick

On the inside, Spanky’s Grill in East Knoxville has the feeling of a mom-and-pop diner—with homey touches like checkerboard tablecloths and lacy white curtains hung from the lone window in the corner—only with a sports-bar twist. There’s a big-screen TV behind the bar counter, set high and centrally located so nearly all of the grill’s patrons have a clear view of televised University of Tennessee football games and other featured sporting events. And then there’s the Volmania flourishes: orange and white streamers and orange pendants and orange table toppers, and a wall-sized game calendar that ends, perhaps too hopefully, with the Southeastern Conference championship game on Dec. 1.

But despite the fact that Spanky’s owners Sheri Katulich and Heather Rumbut envisioned the diner they opened seven months ago as a restaurant, rather than a nightspot or a sports bar, Spanky’s seems to have an image problem that limits its appeal. Rumbut says families that might otherwise appreciate daily home-cooked lunch specials such as meat loaf and spaghetti and country-fried steak generally don’t patronize the establishment off Asheville Highway, perhaps put off by the 60-year-old building’s less-than-accommodating outward appearance, which is much like one of those windowless concrete beer bunkers usually stationed in rougher sections of town. “Once they come in, most people say we look nothing like we do from the outside,” Rumbut says. “We try to market to families, but only a handful came in all summer long.”

What Spanky’s does bring in is smokers—maybe as much as 75 percent of its mostly blue-collar regular customers, by Rumbut’s estimate. And because of Tennessee’s new Non-Smoker Protection Act, which takes effect Oct. 1 and will spell the end of smoking in all but a handful of restaurants and other businesses, Rumbut feels the state has forced her to abandon any notions of appealing to a family-oriented clientele.

How so? To comply with the non-smokers act without losing their loyal patrons, Rumbut and Katulich have chosen to make Spanky’s a 21-and-up establishment full-time, in keeping with one of the act’s exemption clauses. The 21-and-up exemption is intended to exclude bars from having to comply, but restaurants that wish to do so can also keep smoking privileges by adhering to the over-21 rule.

“We just opened, and we couldn’t run the risk of losing what we have, our customers who want to smoke,” Rumbut says of her establishment, which does offer a beer selection, but no liquor. “We’ll be carding people now, only we card them for eating, instead of alcohol.”

It’s easy to sympathize with Rumbut, a struggling small business owner with a considerable financial stake in her fledgling enterprise. But social change rarely comes without cost, and many non-smoking activists feel Tennessee’s joining the great majority of states that already have some sort of significant public smoking ban already in place was long overdue. And smoking’s toll in health costs and human lives—according to one health organization, 9,662 state residents die every year as a “direct result” of cigarette smoking—would seem to be a hefty counter-argument to those claims of economic hardship as a result of a smoking ban. And according to some non-smoking groups, studies in the wake of bans in other cities show a powerful correlation between smoking bans and a decline in smoking-related health issues such as heart attacks.

So how did Tennessee finally overcome its powerful pro-tobacco biases and come to embrace progressive anti-smoking legislation? And what does the recent history of legislation in other states say about the prospects for affected businesses—particularly in the restaurant industry—to adapt?

Undoubtedly, the Non-Smoker Protection Act will spell significant changes in the way Tennesseans live and work. And apparently most of us view those changes favorably; polls taken prior to the act’s passage showed public support for a statewide prohibition on smoking in the workplace hovering somewhere around 60 to 70 percent.

“Folks spoke up like never before,” says Nathan James of Tennessee’s American Heart Association, referring to both the poll numbers and to a torrent of pro-smoking-ban letters directed at the Tennessee Legislature this year. “The Legislature had hundreds of emails, tremendous media coverage. The majority spoke out, and they said ‘I don’t want to have to get my suit dry-cleaned after dinner anymore.’”

But that still means that a significant minority feels that the non-smoking act constitutes a serious infringement on the lives and livelihoods of smokers and the business owners who serve them, that it’s just not right for meddling Big Government to make business decisions and lifestyle choices for the people it’s supposed to serve.

“I’m not a smoker myself,” Rumbut says, “but I resent that as a small business owner, you can’t make the decision in your own place.”

Robert Pritchard, a Maryville laborer who is president and founder of Tennessee’s YesSIR (Yes Smoking in Restaurants) smoker’s rights organizations, and Southeast Regional Director of the Smoker’s Club, puts forth the classic smoker’s lament when he notes, “I counted on a website that there are 170 [restaurants] in Knoxville and Blount County where they have non-smoking policies already, but yet they still want a smoking ban. It’s a matter of choice; you don’t want to be around smoke, then go to a place that doesn’t allow smoking.”

According to John Banzhaf, executive director and founder of the long-running national non-smokers’ rights organization ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), 31 states now have laws similar to Tennessee’s—in essence, laws that prohibit smoking in most workplaces, the most common exception being bars. Twenty-two of those, however, have also extended the ban to bars.

“It seems that at this point, Tennessee is coming into the mainstream. Welcome,” Banzhaf says. “Tennessee is a tobacco-growing state, so you wouldn’t expect it to be at the forefront. In that sense, I think it’s a credit to the state that’s it made the move when it did.”

It didn’t come easy. Non-smoking activists have always considered Tennessee to be a hard case, even among other tobacco-growing states. According to the Campaign for Healthy and Responsible Tennessee (CHART), a coalition of health organizations including Tennessee chapters of the American Heart and America Lung associations as well as the American Cancer Society, 26.8 percent of adult Tennesseans are smokers, as compared to 22 percent nationwide. The figure is even higher among the state’s population of high-school students, at 27.6 percent.

The American Lung Association, meanwhile, gave Tennessee abysmally low ratings in its State of Tobacco Control 2006 report, including failing grades in the categories of Cigarette Tax, Tobacco Prevention and Control Spending, and Smokefree Air. Only in the category of Youth Access to Tobacco did the state receive a passing grade.

But every time a piece of progressive-minded anti-smoking legislation would reach the state House of Representatives, the politics of tobacco would kill the bill before it even reached the floor.

“Tennessee is unique in that every bill that deals with tobacco is referred to the House Standing Committee on Agriculture, instead of a health committee, as in most states,” says Nathan James, who is also vice-president of CHART. “And the chair of the committee has always been a tobacco farmer, until this year. It’s a very difficult set of challenges in Tennessee, as compared to other states. One of the plants on the state seal is a tobacco leaf. The chandelier in the Senate chamber is adorned with golden tobacco leaves. Tennessee was always considered the Mount Everest of tobacco control. Everyone figured we’d be the last to pass a workplace act, but we proved them wrong.”

Boiled down to its essence, the Non-Smoker Protection Act, signed into law June 11 and taking effect Oct. 1, prohibits smoking in all enclosed public places, including: restaurants; public and private education facilities; health care facilities; hotels and motels; retail stores and shopping malls; sports arenas (including enclosed areas in outdoor arenas); lobbies, hallways and other common areas in apartment buildings and other multiple-unit residential facilities; child-care and adult day-care facilities.

Areas exempt from the ban include: private homes, residences and motor vehicles (unless used for child care); non-enclosed areas of public places; venues that restrict access to persons who are 21 years of age or older at all times; private business with three or fewer employees, where smoking may be allowed only in an enclosed room not accessible to the general public; private clubs; smoking rooms in hotels and motels, provided that no more than 25 percent of the rooms in the establishments be designated as smoking rooms; tobacco manufacturers, importers and wholesalers; retail tobacco stores that prohibit minors; nursing homes and long-term care facilities; commercial vehicles occupied only by the operator.

Penalties include $50 fines for individuals who knowingly smoke in prohibited areas, and fines ranging up to $500 for businesses that have failed to comply with any of the act’s requirements.

According to James, a stronger version of the bill originally passed the state Senate, but it was diluted by the exemptions when it reached the House of Representatives. Even with the exemptions, though, James says CHART and other members of the non-smokers coalition were pleased with the final bill.

“We wanted there to be no exemptions, of course,” James says. “But the ones we ended up with were not deal breakers. This bill constitutes much better public policy than what we had before.

“We were all pleased we were able to avoid another pocket veto in the agriculture committee.”

Among businesses, the most vocal opponents of a comprehensive workplace smoking act have traditionally come from the restaurant industry. Year after year, the Tennessee Restaurant Association stood in opposition to any such legislation—every year, that is, until 2007, when TRA finally gave in and supported the Non-Smoker Protection Act.

“I think TRA realized it was a worker-safety issue, and wanted to take care of employees,” says James.

Indeed, some restaurants were already ahead of the curve. In Knoxville, the Tomato Head on Market Square has been non-smoking since 1996, says owner Mahasti Vafaie, who opened the restaurant in 1990, at which time the establishment actually offered an assortment of imported cigarettes.

“We’d made the smoking section smaller and smaller, until it was only four tables,” Vafaie remembers. “It’s an open restaurant, so the smoke wafts. Capping ashtrays was a big problem, keeping them from spilling over and looking yucky. And I really got tired of smelling like smoke. So we finally got rid of the smoking section entirely.”

At the Bistro on Gay Street, longtime manager Martha Boggs says she knew workplace smoking legislation was “a no-brainer… it was inevitable,” though she waited until April of 2006 to declare the Bistro a non-smoking establishment.

“We have no smoke filtration, and I was noticing that we were losing guests who wouldn’t eat here because it was too smoky,” says Boggs. “Someone unfamiliar with the place would come in, and leave because of the smoke. I had put off going non-smoking, hoping they would pass a law first. But it finally came down to the good [of making the move] outweighing the bad. I decided it was better to risk losing a few customers to have a cleaner environment.”

Neither Vafaie nor Boggs believes their non-smoking policy has hurt business in the long run. At the Bistro, Boggs says sales improved by about 7 percent in the year following the smoking ban—a typical yearly gain for the 25-year-old restaurant.

“I’m not sure there was ever an advantage to having smoking,” Boggs says. “Our smoking regulars still come, they just started going outside to smoke. The only serious complaints we get are from people going to theater events [at the adjacent Bijou Theatre]. They see us as just a bar, and figure they can come in for a drink and a smoke before showtime.”

“I think in the long run, we actually grew because we banned smoking,” Vafaie says. “Our regular smokers still ate here, and I think even more people enjoyed the fact that we were smoke free.”

Another, perhaps unseen benefit of going smoke-free: “I’ve noticed fewer incidents of respiratory call-ins from our employees,” says Boggs. “We have fewer colds and fewer cases of the flu.

“It’s rare that any of our people catch a cold; when they do, it’s usually a smoker,” she laughs.

Whether smoking bans have any significant long-term economic consequences, good or ill, for the businesses they most effect is still under debate. Anti-smoking forces cite a handful of studies that seem to indicate little or no net effect. “The reputable studies show virtually no harm at all,” says Banzhaf.

“Our experience is that once smoking bans go into effect at particular establishments, people say things like, ‘I’ll never go there again,’” he continues. “But the fact is they rarely go through with that. They tend to follow the same patterns they always have; they go to the same places, and they smoke outside.”

Likewise, an analysis of literature by the Smoke-Free Environments Law Project, a Michigan-based organization that compiles information on the harmful effects of environmental tobacco smoke, concludes that “while the tobacco industry has for years stated that smoke-free policies will reduce customer patronage of smoke-free businesses, there are no credible, scientific studies that support these claims.”

Smokers’ rights groups, on the other hand, generally counter with anecdotal evidence, and with claims that non-smoking groups (“Nannies”, as one smokers’ group disparagingly calls them) cook the books by employing questionable statistical evidence, and by ignoring the fact that broad statistics often mask the damage done to individual businesses.

Libertarian Web crank Dave Hitt writes that “studies funded by anti-smoker groups achieve their numbers by: including many businesses which are not affected by bans; under-representing businesses that are the most impacted by bans; excluding many of the businesses that are most devastated by bans (pools rooms, bowling alleys, etc.); ignoring the issue of compliance.”

More comical is the Smoker’s Club, Inc.’s so-called “Encyclopedia of Ban Damage,” an aggregation that lists not only reports and quotes from individual business owners in the U.S. and Canada who claim to have been adversely affected by smoking bans, but also a cataloguing of violent acts and freak accidents that allegedly came about as a direct result of smoking bans: “NY: Bouncer kills a smoker with a pool cue… Canada: A 65-year-old smoker dies out in the cold…” (The lone anecdote from Tennessee cites an instance where a 14-year-old boy allegedly shot a school bus driver to death after she reported the boy for using smokeless tobacco on the bus.)

Economist Michael Pakko argues more convincingly than most, however, when he observes that it’s probably too early to make any definitive statements on how smoking bans will play, economically speaking, over time. “Discerning economic impact can be difficult,” Pakko writes. “Widespread smoking bans are a recent phenomenon; so data are limited. Many smoking bans are riddled with exemptions or were passed in communities where nonsmoking establishments were already becoming the norm… The issues remain hazy.”

But economic impact has never been the primary focus of smoking bans; anti-smoking legislation is first a matter of public health, and it’s hard to conceive that such legislation won’t have at least a slight positive impact in that regard, given the long and well-catalogued history of smoking’s ill effects.

And non-smoking activists like Banzhaf argue the impact is anything but slight. Banzhaf cites a study from Helena, Mon., where a workplace smoking ban was enacted, then eventually lifted again. The study showed that heart-attack admissions at local hospitals dropped by 50 percent while the ban was in effect, then rose again by the same shortly after it was rescinded.

“Other, similar studies have also showed big drops, though not quite as big,” Banzhaf says. “It’s very clear that smoking bans measurably reduce health problems.”

And perhaps social change, of any sort, is never without a certain price. Still, for a least a handful of businesses like Spanky’s Grill in East Knoxville, Tennessee’s looming Oct. 1 workplace smoking ban is a frightening prospect, fraught with unanswered questions.

“We were supposed to receive a packet from the health department, giving us the details on procedure and enforcement,” says Rumbut. “But it’s late September, and they still haven’t done that. They’re still talking about it, they say. And we don’t know how it will be enforced, other than it’s just our responsibility.

“I really wanted the restaurant to be open for all of the people of this area,” Rumbut continues. She says she and Katulich both have tremendous financial as well as emotional capital invested in the success of Spanky’s Grill. “Going 21 and up was a really disappointing choice. But we felt it came down to matter of either, we stay open, or we close.”

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West Knoxville nightclub escapes smoking ban??
9/30/2007
By: Stoney Sharp, Reporter

A West Knoxville nightclub fears the ban on smoking would clear out business.

Now, the Electric Cowboy is relying on an exemption in the new law to keep the smoke and dollars flowing.

Electric Cowboy currently allows anyone 18-years old and above entry into their facility.

A radio advertisement that aired on the radio last week broke the news.

“After October 1st we will go to 21 and up,” said the bar’s General Manager, Adam VanVeelen.

There are 10 exemptions to Tennessee’s Non-Smoker Protection Act.

The third exemption on the list allows smoking in venues that only cater to a 21 and up crowd.

“We serve predominately alcohol here which doesn’t cater to somebody who is unable to buy it,” said VanVeelen. “So making it 21 and up was a fairly easy decision for us.”

Hannah Parkman of Knoxville said she is a regular at the Electric Cowboy. Monday, she won’t make the cut.

“It’s not fair. It’s not right,” said Parkman. “I don’t see why they have to take it away. 18 can smoke and 21 can smoke, I don’t see why they have to take it away.”

Others were excited to hear that the nightclub doesn’t plan on tossing the ash trays.

“Unfortunately, If you drink and you’re a smoker, they go hand-in-hand,” said Rennee Phillips of Knoxville.

What could be best for business may come with a price. VanVeelen said employees who aren’t 21 could also get the boot.

“Basically they’re telling me I have to fire 10 to 12 employees,” he said.

The Electric Cowboy may choose to go smoke-free on Sundays to allow the 18 to 20 year-old crowd inside the facility at least once a week.

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8/1/07? Fellow Smoker’s,
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Well, it’s like this, WATE Channel 6 finally got the state to raise the cigarette tax and impose a smoking ban. So here are a few stories, but the first is about Congress and their topics that they come up with.
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http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?s=6852793
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This next story is a real doozey. The local law enforcement in Newport has no clue to what happened July 1, 2007. The tax hike started, but the smoking ban is not until Oct 1, 2007. I’m glad I don’t live in Newport; they probably would arrest the victim instead of the lawbreaker!
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http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?s=6802428
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And then last but least, I have said in the past, ever since the smoking ban talk started, that one day when they got finished with smoker’s, they would start on the drinker’s. Alleluia, I must be clairvoyant, or whatever they call people who can see the future, because brothers and sisters, the government is coming to our rescue. They want to insure that we do not smoke and do not drink. Darn, That was two of my vices and that only leaves one vice left. A person just can’t have fun any more with out BIG BROTHER messing things up.
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http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?s=6863048
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Okay my best guess is that next on the list will be either your car or your sex life, because there is not too much left.
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Take care all
Robert F. Pritchard – mailto:info@yessir-tn.info
Southeast Regional Director of The Smoker’s Club, Inc.
YesSIR of Tennessee – http://www.yessir-tn.info
The Smoker’s Club, Inc. & Video Archive – http://www.smokersclub.com
Smokers Rights Newsletter – http://www.smokersclubinc.com
Smoky Mountain Sales – http://www.smoky-mountain-sales.com?
“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”? – Martin Luther King Jr.

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