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Bar owners to Savannah: Let our customers smoke  

Savannah City Council members got strong blowback Wednesday on a proposed ordinance that would further restrict public smoking.

In an hour-long hearing in City Hall council chambers, a few dozen bar and business owners rallied behind 11 speakers who argued the ordinance, which would ban smoking in bars and many public spaces exempted in a 2005 state law, would put smokers out of bars and onto sidewalks, streets and squares. A few of them described the ban as un-American, a step toward socialism and "an attempt by creeping forces of Puritanism." . . .

After the hearing, Mayor Otis Johnson, who has publicly endorsed the initiative from Healthy Savannah, said the buffer is something council will have to consider.

"We have to be aware of the width of our sidewalks and whether it would cause congestion," he said.

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