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Neighbours Hell From Smoking Shelter  

A SMOKING shelter at Avening Social Club will have to be torn down as it is causing a nuisance to neighbours.

The shelter over the patio area at the club in Woodstock Lane will be taken down within a month after Cotswold District Council's planning committee authorised enforcement action on Wednesday.

Neighbour Nigel Bowsher told the planning committee the smoking shelter meant he and his family had no privacy in their garden and had to put up with noise and anti-social behaviour.

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• Lobbyists pressure MPs to relax ban 

Pro-smoking group Forest will today pressure MPs to amend the smoking ban and allow licensed smoking rooms in pubs and clubs.

Speaking at a House of Commons reception hosted by Tory MP Philip Davies the group's director Simon Clark plans to highlight the plight of pubs to an audience of MPs.

Handing them each a complimentary Montecristo No. 2 cigar, he will say: "Many pubs and clubs have suffered serious economic hardship and for many smokers the social impact has been equally severe.

"It is very unfair, especially on older smokers. For some mental health sufferers the impact of the ban has been devastating.

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Businesses Begin to Take Smoking Outdoors 

An increase in requests for outdoor liquor licenses in Eau Claire could have more to do with smoking than drinking.

Tuesday, the city council will decide whether to allow alcohol in outdoor dining areas at Woo's Pagoda and Hoot's Hilltop Tavern. Earlier this month the council approved similar requests from the Mousetrap and Mogie's Pub. The owners of the Mousetrap say they want to serve alcohol outdoors so customers can continue to smoke even after the public smoking ban takes effect on July 1st.

Josh Prock, owner of the Mousetrap says, "I can't see a better way of adapting to it. People are still going to smoke so we're going to try to provide them with the best area that we can for them to do it in."

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Smoking Ban in Bars Starts Soon in Kanawha County 

In just over a week, a Kanawha County smoking ban will get a little tougher.

People will no longer be allowed to light up in bars, gambling parlors or the Tri-State Racetrack and Gaming Center.

Many are fuming about the regulations.

Bar owner Brent Mallory built an outdoor area for his patrons who want to smoke, but was shocked to learn his waitresses and bartenders wouldn't be allowed to serve them.

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Group pushes smoking ban 

The smoking ban being considered by Anderson City Council is not strong enough, an Anderson-based advocacy group says.

Karesa Knight-Wilkerson, executive director of Healthy, Tobacco-Free Madison County, said she would like the council to pass a comprehensive smoking ban that considers the health of employees and adults, as well as children.

"Our focus is on health, the health of the employees and the health of everyone," she said. "Especially in today's economy, people can't choose where to work." . . .

All three, Knight-Wilkerson said, want a more comprehensive smoking ban than the one currently drafted. The version presented allows restaurants to continue a smoking section, as long as it is separated with a solid wall and door.

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LEGAL ROW OVER SMOKING SHELTER 

A Legal challenge is to be mounted over the decision by one of Britain's top pub operators to reopen a smoking shelter in Scunthorpe High Street.

Bosses at the Barracuda Group insist the veranda-style shelter at the £850,000 bar complies with the smoking ban laws and it will remain open until further notice.

But North Lincolnshire Council, which has had to enforce the smoking laws since they came in last July, is taking legal advice on the reopening of the controversial shelter.

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Pubs battle to have the best gardens as smokers go outside 

PUBLICANS are swapping pint glasses for watering cans to make their gardens the best place for smokers to be during the summer.

Pubs across Derby are flocking to take part in this year's Derby In Bloom competition and all are keen to be crowned champions of the best pub, cafe or restaurant category.

But landlords who have been preening hedges and watering their hanging baskets are being warned that there are just over two weeks left in which to enter the contest.

Dawn Dagley, who has organised the annual event for the ninth year, thinks the smoking ban, which came into force on July 1 last year, has led to landlords doing even more to keep the outsides of their pubs looking great.

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• Ban on smoking leaves many pubs with a monster hangover  

One year ago, the smoking ban - a law some said would devastate Britain's pubs - came into place. The big landlords have endured a tough 12 months, but critics say they have hardly helped themselves. The industry has been slow to adapt to consumer demands, failed to lure in different customers at different times of the day with a diverse range of offers - decent coffee, free Wi-Fi and complementary copies of the Evening Standard - to go with beer and proper food in the evening.

Steven Moore, analyst at Growth Equities & Company Research, said: "A key differentiator looks to have been the swiftness and ability of companies to respond with the provision of outside spaces with covering, lighting and heaters.

"Although the climate the companies now find themselves in is undeniably challenging, there is some encouragement. The evidence from Scotland, where the smoking ban came in earlier, is that customers are drifting back as they get used to the ban."

Which pub groups are still sparkling and which are suffering from a major hangover?

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Smoke bans may spread as drawbacks fail to eventuate 

ANTI-TOBACCO groups have called for smokers to butt out in alfresco dining areas and beer gardens that serve food, with research showing a sharp rise in people going to the pub since strict bans began last year.

New data from Cancer Council Victoria shows a 9% rise in hotel patronage since July last year, when smoking was banned inside all pubs and nightclubs.

And the growing popularity of smoke-free pubs has been confirmed by the Australian Hotels Association.

More than 80% of the 1250 respondents to the survey -- which included current and former smokers -- said the ban had not made any difference.

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• Smoking in public still enough to spark an occasional flare-up 

Apparently tempers still flare occasionally.

"I will be back," vowed Meg Dalton in one of the heated e-mails she and John Bayliss, owner of Fremont's English-style The George & Dragon Pub, have exchanged for weeks about smoking on the bar's deck. Bayliss, during the argument, had banned Dalton from his establishment.

The exchange began May 19 when Dalton e-mailed Bayliss saying she was new in town and had gone to the bar during the two previous weekends. "On all of these occasions both of your outdoor decks were full of smokers and the smoke was billowing into the inside of the bar," she wrote. "This is unacceptable and I trust that you will immediately correct this situation."

Dalton had copied the health agency, Public Health -- Seattle & King County, which sent inspectors to the bar, and after finding someone smoking, issued a warning, agency spokeswoman Hilary Karasz said. Inspectors will go back and the next violation will carry a $100 fine, she said.

But Bayliss, not pleased by the inspection, blamed Dalton in a June 4 e-mail for cutbacks: "so thank you very much ... now our business sales have dropped because the smokers can't smoke outside ... they are just going to go to one of a thousand places where people smoke on patios or outside the bars. So now I will have to terminate the employment of several staff ... "

But Dalton responded that Bayliss' "customers wouldn't go elsewhere if the law were being enforced uniformly" . . .

In fact, bars and taverns statewide have seen a greater increase in business than before the smoking ban's passage in 2005, according to a state Department of Revenue study released Tuesday.

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Radio Iowa: Bar owners raise objections with legislators over smoking ban 

Bar owners are protesting the way the state plans to implement a smoking ban on July 1, 2008. The Iowa Clean Air Act approved by lawmakers this spring included a loophole which would allow smoking on outdoor patios at bars, but new rules drafted by the Iowa Department of Public Health classify nearly every bar that serves hot food as a restaurant, which means no smoking on the patio.

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Smoking ban foes blast rule 

Some business owners and lawmakers complained Wednesday about proposed rules for the state's new smoking ban, saying they treat hundreds of bars as restaurants and outlaw smoking in outdoor patio areas.

"In my mind and in the minds of just about every single legislator I've talked with in the past week - and that's about 20 or so - this is an absolute perversion of the legislative intent. Period," said Rep. McKinley Bailey, a Webster City Democrat who voted against the bill in April.

The state's administrative rules are intended to help clarify and implement laws and spell out details of enforcement. The Legislature's Administrative Rules Review Committee discussed the proposed rules for the smoking ban Wednesday.

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Loophole in Iowa's smoking ban 

A loophole in Iowa's approaching smoking ban will allow people to light up in outdoor seating areas of bars.

At restaurants, though, the ban that takes affect July 1 will apply to outdoor areas.

When is a bar a restaurant?

It depends on the food served.

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With Workplace Smoking Bans Implemented In Many States, Businesses Turn To Gazebos As An Outdoor Haven For Their Smoking Employees 

Workplaces nationwide are implementing smoke free policies in response to State and Local laws that prohibit smoking in the workplace. To help smoking employees cope with the changes, many businesses are installing gazebos in a designated smoking area to give employees a shelter so that they may have a cigarette on their breaks.

"We are helping many businesses who are interested in building a gazebo to give their employees a smoking designated area that provides some shelter and protection from the elements," comments Charles Scordato, President of the family owned business Leisure Woods. "Employees appreciate having a pleasant area to go to and businesses can easily designate the area as the only place on company property where smoking is allowed."

Studies have shown that smoke free workplaces protect employees from secondhand smoke and workplace smoking restrictions lead to less smoking among workers1. "My company built a roomy gazebo last year for our smoking area. While adapting to the smoking ban was challenging, the smokers did appreciate that we had a covered area to go to, especially in the winter," comments Dan Anderson from Philadelphia, PA.

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• Medical marijuana user files human rights complaint over smoking laws 

Ontario regulations banning medicinal-marijuana users from smoking on bar and restaurant patios violate the human rights of people with disabilities, alleges an Ottawa man who has filed a complaint over the issue.

Russell Barth submitted the complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission on Monday on behalf of himself and his wife, Christine Lowe.

"We're not asking for special rights; we're just asking for the right to use cannabis where people use tobacco," Barth, an amateur comedian, said Tuesday.

The letter accompanying the complaint alleges that the Ontario ban "infringes on our rights to gain access to services and infringes on our ability to perform on stage and to seek possible future employment as performers.

"It has also caused us much stress, ill health, embarrassment and humiliation."

Barth said he obtained a Health Canada licence to use medical marijuana in 2003 after being diagnosed with a variety of disorders, including post-traumatic stress syndrome, asthma and fibromyalgia

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