Tobacco.org

Rewind to '94: Smokers dwindling 

The tobacco industry is a long way from surrender and shows every sign of fighting the most recent FDA scientific finding as if the industry's life depended on it. Which it may. If the FDA goes along with the advisory, a strong possibility is that nicotine will be regulated as an addictive substance. It will be increasingly hard for the industry to sell cigarettes on the domestic market. The price rise has driven away most non-addicted smokers. Programs to break the nicotine addiction are improving. The mean irony is that more government effort is paid for by a dwindling coterie of addicts. What with health-care reform, the load on smokers surely will get heavier as their numbers continue to dwindle.

-- Columbian editorial, Aug. 7, 1994

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Stop-smoking benefit to be available to Medicaid clients through WA State Tobacco Quit Line 

State officials say that beginning July 1, Medicaid clients will be able to access a new stop-smoking benefit that will include counseling and prescription drugs.

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Bars bounced back from smoking ban 

Bar, restaurants and taverns have reportedly bounced back strongly from the effects of the Initiative 901 smoking ban, racking up strong gains in gross income during 2007.

Businesses that feared being hard hit by the ban on smoking in public places, generated 20.3 percent more gross income in 2007, compared to a 0.3 percent gain in 2006, the first full year after the smoking ban took effect in December 2005, state Department of Revenue officials reported.

Their average growth rate actually was stronger in the two years after I-901 than in the years preceding the ballot initiative.

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Bars Recovering from Smoking Ban 

New numbers from the state's Department of Revenue show bar and tavern revenues have actually risen since the controversial indoor smoking ban took effect.

The stats show revenues have risen by $130 million since the last full year before the ban.

Bar owners KNDU talked with Wednesday say they think smokers have finally adjusted to the new rules.

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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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Bar owner in contempt of state's smoking ban; Judge gives time to devise smoking area  

A judge found tavern owner Frank Schnarrs in contempt of court Monday for violating the state's voter-approved ban on smoking in public places.

But Thurston County Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks left the door open for Schnarrs to comply if Schnarrs were able to build an indoor designated-smoking area using health criteria on par with outdoor-smoking rooms created by other bars.

Hicks struck down Schnarrs' offer of a $1 day pass into his members-only club, "Friends of Frankie's," as being the "Achilles' heel " that left Schnarrs vulnerable to charges he was operating outside the bounds of the 2005 state law.

"Any stranger can come in, without a sponsoring member, pay the $1 guest fee, and be allowed to smoke," Hicks said. "This is not a private place, when anyone can come in like that -- it's public."

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• Bar owner found in contempt  

A judge found tavern owner Frank Schnarrs in contempt of court Monday for violating the state's voter-approved ban on smoking in public places.

But Thurston County Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks left the door open for Schnarrs to comply if Schnarrs were able to build an indoor designated smoking area using health criteria on par with outdoor smoking rooms created by other bars.

Hicks struck down Schnarrs' offer of a $1 day-pass into his members-only club, "Friends of Frankie's," as being the "Achilles heel" that left Schnarrs vulnerable to charges he was operating outside the bounds of the 2005 state law.

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Olympia bar owner loses court battle against smoking ban 

A bar owner in Olympia who opened a smoking area has been found in contempt of court for violating the state ban on smoking in public places.

The owner of Frankies Sports Bar and Grill, Frank Schnarrs, had opened an area on the second floor of his bar where patrons were allowed to smoke for a $1 charge. He argues that a provision in the law allowed the exemption as a members-only club.

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• Governor Signs Fire-Safe Cigarette Bill 

At the end of March, Governor Christine Gregoire signed a bill that requires cigarette companies to meet criteria that makes the cigarettes they produce less flammable in order to be sold in Washington, with the exception of tribal land.

The fire-safe cigarette has significantly less propensity to ignite bedding, couches and chairs when carelessly discarded or left burning, a news release said Wednesday.

Cigarette companies have until August 1, 2009, to make the design changes

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Bar owner's hearing delayed  

A judge on Tuesday put off a contempt-of-court hearing for tavern owner Frank Schnarrs until June 9 to give Thurston County more time to gather evidence that he has violated the state's 21/2-year-old indoor-smoking ban.

Schnarrs, the owner of Frankie's Sports Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue Southeast in Olympia, started a members-only club in his second-floor smoking room last week to try to show that he is in compliance with a provision in the state law that exempts a "private workplace within a public place."

But Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks, the sixth judge since April 2006 to be assigned in the case, said Tuesday that the county will have to be allowed into the private club to decide whether it meets the exemption requirements.

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Judge: Search warrant OK to check on smoking at Frankie's  

A judge delayed a hearing today on whether tavern owner Frank Schnarrs should be held in contempt of court for violating the state smoking ban until June 9 in order to give Thurston County more time to gather evidence.

Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks, the sixth judge since April 2006 to be assigned in the case, said he saw probable cause to issue a search warrant for Frankie's Sports Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue Southeast.

The warrant, Hicks said, was in order since county health inspectors were turned away by Schnarrs Friday night.

That was following Schnarrs' move Friday afternoon to change his second-floor smoking room into a private, members-only club in an attempt to meet a provision of state law that exempts a "private workplace inside a public place" from the smoking ban.

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GRIER: Smoking ban unfair, insulting  

When I head to the Upper Peninsula every summer, one of my favorite activities is relaxing outside with a cigar on a beautiful Michigan night. . . .

The ban is touted as a way to rescue bar and restaurant workers from the much-hyped perils of secondhand smoke. But before approving such legislation, it's worth asking whether these workers really need protecting. Often working as a bartender, I find it a bit disconcerting to see my profession become the object of such concern in so many states and cities. Firefighters, fishermen, coal miners, and even pizza delivery drivers take on far greater dangers than I ever have serving drinks. . . .

There are not, so far as I know, groups of oppressed consumers demanding restaurants where the cooks have dirty hands and the meat is rotten. People do demand places where they can smoke and drink together. . . .

In addition, what goes on in the kitchen is difficult for diners to discover from the outside, while smoking policies are easily ascertained. . . .

The good news for nonsmoking Michiganders is that business owners are already curtailing smoking in response to consumer preferences, just as they were in Washington before our ban took effect. . . .

Nonsmokers have good reason to desire smoke-free bars and restaurants. Tobacco smoke is smelly and annoying. Or is it aromatic and enjoyable? The difference is a matter of taste. . .

Michigan should resist the urge to join California, the District of Columbia and countless other states and cities in the panic over tobacco.

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• Judge won't dismiss lawsuit over tribal cigarette sales 

The Nisqually Indian Tribe is unlikely to win its claim that Gov. Chris Gregoire struck an illegal deal to allow cigarette sales at Frank's Landing, a small Indian community outside the tribe's reservation, a judge said Thursday.

In an order issued in Tacoma, U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton said he is aware of no federal law that would prohibit the type of arrangement at issue, and he declined to issue an injunction shutting down the smoke shop.

However, Leighton also said he would not dismiss the lawsuit before the tribe has a chance to amend its complaint.

Frank's Landing is a 19-acre Indian community outside the Nisqually reservation between Fort Lewis and Olympia. The community is not a federally recognized tribe, but Congress has recognized its several dozen members as an independent "Indian community" not subject to the jurisdiction of any tribe. . . .

Frank's Landing struck a deal with the nearby Squaxin Island Tribe, which agreed to lease the smoke shop and share tax revenue for use on local projects. Gregoire amended the state's tobacco tax compact with the Squaxins to formalize the arrangement, and the shop reopened early this year as Skookum Creek Tobacco Co.

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Officials: Mom's discarded cigarette started blaze 

The mother of a toddler left alone inside a burning apartment on Wednesday may have started the fire with a discarded cigarette, investigators said.

And now the Pierce County Prosecutor's Office is trying to decide whether to file child abandonment charges against the mother, who has never been in trouble before and whose husband is serving in Iraq.

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Police: Mom Leaves Toddler To Get Fast-Food, Returns To Apartment Fire  

A 22-month-old boy was left alone inside an apartment when a lit cigarette tossed in a garbage can started a fire, said police.

The 23-year-old mother could face charges for leaving her child to get fast-food, and returning to an apartment engulfed in flames.

Chopper 7 was over the massive apartment fire at the Chestnut Hill apartments in Puyallup Wednesday.

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