Smoking a burning issue

By Melissa Dunson

JOPLIN, Mo. — In the heated debate about smoking bans, people tend to focus on personal choice versus health.

But small-business owners like Michael Wiggins, owner of both Granny Shaffer’s locations in Joplin, say the real issue is an economic one that is being largely overlooked. Wiggins’ restaurants offer options. The Range Line Road location has a smoking section 20 feet from the non-smoking section, with a separate heating and air system. His Seventh Street location is smoke free.

The issue has been heated in the Four State Area, with area hospitals eliminating all smoking from campuses on Sept. 1. But the debate is far from over.



Across the state

St. Louis County officials have asked the Missouri state Legislature to decide whether all of Missouri restaurants should be smoke free.

Public smoking bans are already in place in several Missouri communities and Pat Bergauer of the Missouri Restaurant Association says locally owned and operated businesses are the ones paying the price.

“We’ve found, unfortunately, that there is an economic impact (of smoking bans),” Bergauer said. “It’s the independent operators, the mom and pops, who are being affected.”

Many of the bans specifically target restaurants by still allowing smoking in bars and clubs, but not in restaurants with bars. She said a sports-themed association member’s business in Ballwin, Mo., saw business decrease 35 percent after the city’s smoking ban went into place.

“You have to remember, restaurants only see a 5 percent to 10 percent return on the dollar in their business,” Bergauer said. “When you see a 30 percent decrease, how do you stay in business?”

Smoking ban legislation is on the November ballot in small Missouri cities like Independence, Lee’s Summit and Kirkwood, some with exceptions for bars while others prohibit all types of combustibles, including fireworks.

“Small-business owners are speaking out on this,” Bergauer said. “And when they do, they’re being called selfish for being concerned about their business. In one meeting, an owner said, ‘Don’t you realize I’ve worked all my life for this? This is my dream.’ ”

Bergauer said St. Louis County voted not to put a ban in place when officials there saw the potential for customers taking their business to other nearby counties.



Local effect

Wiggins, of Granny Shaffer’s, said private business owners should decide whether their establishments are smoke free.

“My first feeling on it is that people should have choices,” Wiggins said. “Keep the government out of it — stay out of my business — we’ve got bigger things to worry about. But if you’re going to do it (banning smoking), just make it fair.”

Gary Leonard, owner of all the Springfield, Mo., Steak n’ Shakes, said he lost 6 percent of his business from his third shift crowd after the city’s smoking ban was passed. Leonard isn’t opposed to a smoking ban. He said he knows second-hand smoke is dangerous, and his restaurants have run more efficiently since the ban started.

But Leonard’s smoking crowd is eating at other local restaurants that fall under the legislation’s exceptions.

“I’ve got people who’ve ate with me for 20 years, and I don’t see them anymore,” Leonard said. “I don’t have a problem if everybody’s on the same playing field, but my customers are going to go where they can smoke. It’s a matter of comfort and convenience. I think if there wasn’t anywhere else they could go smoke, they would come back.”



Arkansas study

Arkansas enacted a statewide smoking restriction July 21, but Fayetteville had put a citywide ban into effect two years earlier. The Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas used Fayetteville for an economic study on how the smoking ban would affect restaurants.

Kathy Deck, spokeswoman for the business center, said the study showed no significant impact but warned there were individual businesses that were hurt.

“These are averages,” Deck said. “It certainly does affect different businesses differently. To say that it won’t hurt anybody is just not true and it’s unfair to imply that.”

Deck said most of the Fayetteville businesses negatively affected by the law were small independently owned and operated restaurants.

“We talked with some folks and the ones that were most upset were those that competed with bars,” Deck said. “Because bars are exempted, if a restaurant acts like a bar at night, they felt they got an unfair shake.

“So were they disproportionately affected, the man on the street says, ‘Yeah,’” Deck said.

Virgil Neuroth, spokesman for the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce, said smoking bans are inevitable, but should be left up to the business owner. He said small businesses in Fayetteville were negatively affected especially before the statewide ban passed and Fayetteville customers could travel a few miles to smoke at Springdale, Ark. restaurants.



Fed study

In May, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis released a study done by the Center for Regional Economics that concluded there was no overall economic impact of enacting a Missouri-wide smoking ban on restaurants. That study, too, also concluded there would be individual casualties of the legislation.

The study examines Maryville, the first Missouri city to enact a restaurant smoking ban in June 2003, and the economic impact on the city’s 37 restaurants and bars. The conclusion was, once again, that smoking bans have little overall impact on sales or employment, but do unfairly affect some businesses.

“They (ban proponents) say that’s just the price you’ll have to pay,” Bergauer said. “There’s no compromise. We have a (association) member who is deeply concerned about winter when her customers won’t be able to smoke even on the patio. She said, ‘We’re in the hospitality business. How do I tell my customers to go smoke in the snow or the rain?’”

“Why can’t we make that decision ourselves?” Bergauer said. “If we comply with all the rules, why isn’t it a private business decision? When you look at it like that, when is a private business not a private business anymore?”



Melissa Dunson writes for The Joplin (Mo.) Globe.

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