By all means, ban smoking in private clubs.
I never thought I'd agree with gun-mongering Sen. Michael Waddoups. I'm not sure what his real motives are in proposing a ban, and I don't care. Maybe he thinks he'll hurt the club owners financially (he won't). Maybe he truly cares about the health of club employees. Maybe it's just one of those religious objections that doesn't need explanation to the non-faithful. Whatever.
What I love most about this debate is the way it exposes selfishness and hypocrisy.
Bars are the front lines in Utah's cultural divide. So it is no surprise that free-market Republicans, who generally avoid them, would consider taking away the choice to smoke, masking their moral objections with the laudable goal of improving public health.
Bar patrons lean to more liberal persuasions, yet on a matter of serious public health they squawk about being inconvenienced. The ones who like to smoke when they drink can't be bothered to take their carcinogenic habit outside, even though they know that secondhand smoke kills thousands every year. Punish the evil tobacco companies (whose profits they feed), they cry, not us.
If non-smoking employees and patrons have to smoke along with them, well, they chose to be there, didn't they? Well, yes. But as Sen. Waddoups might say, cigarettes don't kill people. Smokers kill people. Smokers can choose to take it outside, but they don't.
If a smoking ban annoys club owners too, I say great. All their talk about defending their customers' rights is hogwash. If they really were fighting on behalf of their clientele, they'd be working to abolish the private club fees, as I wrote three weeks ago. Or they could just give memberships away.
As one club owner wrote to me: "The state has a huge gray area as to how many private club memberships you can give away vs sell. At our club, we actually give away more than we sell which is totally in compliance. So the question remains: Why even bother?"
Why, indeed. Because most club owners love the money, I imagine. Why, then, are they fighting the ban? According to the Centers for Disease Control, bar revenues tend to increase when smoking is banned.
There are plenty of other good reasons. One study I found concluded that strong smoking regulations discourage youths from viewing smoking as socially acceptable. That keeps kids from starting.
People feel the urge to light up in a bar because everyone else is lighting up. Smoking begets smoking. If they can spend hours on an airplane without smoking, they can do it in a bar, where they at least have the option of stepping outside to feed the beast. If New Yorkers can handle it, Utahns will do fine.
Leaving the option up to individual clubs, as is the case now, is a non-starter. Witness how few - the owners of the Gastronomy chain being the notable exception - feel they can ban smoking and risk losing business. As long as it is optional, there is no option.
But when push comes to shove, ideology will probably triumph over public health, as it too often does, and the Legislature will punt. Maybe it just won't want to be seen as consorting politically with San Franciscans. If the ban fails, I hope Sen. Waddoups will come back next year and try again.
In the meantime, here's a challenge for the self-righteous smokers who want you to believe that the issue is personal choice: The next time you want to light up in a bar, first make a general announcement that you plan to do so. Ask, in all sincerity, if there's anyone who objects. If just one courageous non-smoker speaks up - maybe they don't want to share your smoke, or maybe they just don't want their clothes to stink - will you refrain?
If smokers cared enough about common courtesy as they do about their right to poison our common air, smoking in bars would end tomorrow.
This isn't so much about rights or morality. This is about selfishness and hypocrisy. And there's no logic to either.
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John Yewell is a regular contributor to these pages. He may be reached at johnyewell@yahoo.com.
