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Jump to full article: Beaver County (PA) Times / Allegheny Times, 2009-09-27
Author: Michael Pound - Beaver County Times
Intro: The air is cleaner, but Sal Diana says his wallet is a little lighter, too.
In the year that’s passed since the state’s indoor smoking ban went into effect, Diana shut down Humphrey’s restaurant in the Beaver Valley Mall — a staple there for 15 years — in part because smoking customers had moved on.
“It wasn’t the killer for me, but it contributed, there’s no question,” said Diana, who closed Humphrey’s in July. “You noticed that after a certain hour, that crowd you would always get wasn’t showing up any longer. They all went somewhere where they could smoke.” . . .
“The people who are coming in to eat love it, and that’s the biggest part of the business there, by far,” he said. “But the younger ones who came in the evening to have a beer or have a cocktail, they’ve moved to one of the places that has an exemption.”
The ban hurt Diana, and it had an impact on fellow bar owners across the state. The Pennsylvania Tavern Association has said that the number of taverns in the state dropped from 16,000 six years ago to 12,500 this year; it also estimates that hundreds of those closings came since the ban.
“These are guys just trying to make a business work, and the state drove a big chunk of their customers elsewhere,” he said. “The law isn’t fair to everyone, that’s the shame of it.”
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