Columbia's bars down 11 percent says Federal Reserve economist

Just updated research by Federal Reserve economist Dr. Michael Pakko shows the impact of a smoking ban on the bars and restaurants in the town of Columbia, Missouri. Bar business is down 11 percent. Restaurants thatserve alcohol are down 6.5 percent. Though many Columbia businesses were already smoke-free before the smoking ban was imposed, Dr. Pakko shows that the smoking ban caused a 3.5 to 4.0 percent drop in the Columbia bar and restaurant business overall. Not a very attractive prospect for businesses in other towns and states considering smoking bans as a recession newresearch by Federal Reserve economist Dr. Michael Pakko demonstrates thatsmoking bans are a real threat to both casinos and mom and pop businesses.Dr. Pakko has studied Delaware casinos and found a smoking ban cut theirbusiness by 14 percent. Dr. Pakko also believes smoking bans may cut barjobs by 14 percent in some states. He has just completed a review of theimpact of a smoking ban on the bars and restaurants in the town ofColumbia, Missouri. Bar business is down 11 percent. Restaurants thatserve alcohol are down 6.5 percent. Though many Columbia businesses werealready smoke-free before the smoking ban was imposed, Dr. Pakko showsthat the smoking ban caused a 3.5 to 4.0 percent drop in the Columbia barand restaurant business overall. Not a very attractive prospect forbusinesses in other towns and states considering smoking bans as a recession begins.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/regecon/op/CRE8OP-2008-002.pdf
http://research.stlouisfed.org/econ/pakko/mpbans.html
http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Mar/20080329News002.asp

Smoke-Free St. Louis City a grass roots movement?

In a post today on the Political Fix blog, Jake Wagman calls Smoke-Free St. Louis City "a grassroots movement".
http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/political-fix/political-fix/2008/03/royale-treatment-political-watering-hole-goes-smoke-free/

Check out my reply in the comments section and add on yourself.

Smoke-Free St. Louis City gets ventilation wrong.

The latest post on the Smoke-Free St. Louis City website claims that ventilation and air filtration won't protect bartenders from cigarette smoke since "ventilation cannot purify the air at rates fast enough to protect people from secondhand smoke exposure."

Yet ASHRAE and OSHA allow ventilation and air filtration to protect workers in enclosed parking garages and welding shops from far more deadly smoke and fumes.
http://www.garasjeventilasjon.no/lager/Ventilation%20for%20enclosed%20parking%20garages.pdf
http://www.engwald.com/pdf/weld_page1.pdf
http://www.air-quality-eng.com/welding.php
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2005/10/secondhand-smoke-in-bars-restaurants.html

A study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory found that restaurant ventilation/filtration systems can make the air of a nonsmoking section ofa smoking restaurant as clean as the air of smoke-free restaurant.
http://www.data-yard.net/2/21/rtp.pdf

The CDC even recommends that such air filtration systems be installed inbuildings as a way of protecting workers from airborne chemical, biological or radiological attacks:
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2003-136/

So why is tobacco smoke being single out as the one workplace airborne hazard that ventilation and air filtration can't handle?

The Smoke-Free St. Louis City site correct quotes an official ASHRAE statement that claims no technology exists which can perfectly prevent the exposure to tobacco smoke in a space in which smoking is allowed and therefore such ventilation and air filtration technology cannot be considered adequate health protection against indoor tobacco smoke.

"At present, the only means of effectively eliminating health risks associated with indoor exposure is to ban smoking activity... No other engineering approaches, including current and advanced dilution ventilation or air cleaning technologies, have demonstrated or should be relied upon to control health risks from ETS [environmental tobacco smoke] exposure in spaces where smoking occurs."

It should be noted that a large portion of the ASHRAE engineers objected to and fought the adoption of this statement. And all the local ventilation engineers I talked to for the St. Louis County Council believed well-designed ventilation systems could safely allow smoking in St. Louis bars and restaurants. But I will concede, no system is perfect. Yet no one disagrees ventilation and air filtration machines can hugely reduce the smoke in any venue that allows smoking. Whether tiny residual exposures to tobacco molecules still constitute a real health risk is hugely controversial. In a free society, people over 21 should be allowed to take such minute "risks" concerning which they have been overwhelmingly warned.

Smoke-Free St. Louis City Happy Hour argues against smoking ban.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9kU8RM0pE

The video on You Tube of the Smoke-Free St. Louis City Happy Hour at
rBar is a good argument against a St. Louis smoking ban. The video features the owner of rBar saying both he and the majority of his customers like the rBar smoke-free. College-age members of Smoke-Free St. Louis express their dislike of secondhand smoke and their appreciation for the smoke-free air at rBar. Well, what's the problem? These kids aren't breathing tobacco smoke and the owner is gladly making money. But if every corner bar in St. Louis were forced to ban smoking, the bar owner would lose his niche market and people would start to flout the ban as they do in places with strict bans such as Ohio. Then the kids would be back to breathing smoke at the bar.
http://www.smokechoke.com/

Ed Martin's Call for aldermanic term limits is against St. Louis freedom!

In his new St. Louis Metro Sentinel Journal column, Ed Martin has called for term limits for members of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen. I liked Ed Martin's defenses of Archbishop Burke awhile back, and I believe in his defense of the freedom of St. Charles pharmacist Heather Williams not to dispense the immoral "morning after" pill and still work, but Martin's new idea is a bad one. St. Louisans should be free to keep their alderman as long as they like. I am in the 28th Ward and would like to Lyda Krewson to remain our alderman for many more years. Futhermore, St. Louis needs to keep pro-freedom aldermen such as Lewis Reed and Stephen Gregali in City Hall for many more years to come too.

Al's Restaurant should join American Cancer Society Boycott

I heard on KMOX that Al's Restaurant is honoring the memory of family and friends lost to cancer by donating a portion of all sales today and tomorrow to the American Cancer Society.
http://www.alsrestaurant.net/daffodil_days.pdf

The American Cancer Society is the last political organization to which a St. Louis restaurant should donate! Al's currently allows smoking in their bar. It also allows smoking in its dining area if no one present objects. The American Cancer Society will use the money Al's gives them to spread false claims about the dangers Al's smoking policy presents to public health and organize a group, Smoke-Free St. Louis City, to take away Al's freedom and property rights. Al's should join the nationwide boycott of the American Cancer Society and donate instead to a real charity that will help find a cure for cancer and help pay for the treatment of those suffering from the dread disease.
http://www.nycclash.com/ACSBoycott.html

Smoke-Free St. Louis City pushes biased Italian heart attack study.

A March 3 post on the Smoke-Free St. Louis website touts a very dubious Italian heart attack study in support of a St. Louis smoking ban.
http://www.smokefreestl.org/

But antismoking expert Dr. Michael Siegel says of this study:

"Results of this and related studies (with similar methodology) are being used by anti-smoking advocates in testimony before policy makers that smoking bans have an immediate effect on heart attack rates.

There's just one problem with all of this: the conclusions of this study are not supported by the data. The data clearly show that the decline in heart attack rates among adults in these two age groups began prior to the implementation of the smoking ban. Thus, it is evident that the decline is not attributable to the smoking ban.

What is so alarming about the conclusion of this Italian smoking ban study is not so much that the authors have drawn a conclusion that follows from the data but have failed to consider alternative explanations for the cause of the decline in heart attack rates. What is so alarming is that they have drawn a conclusion that is completely unsupported by the data itself."
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/search?q=Italian+heart+attack+study

Dr. Siegel endorses a previous study by St. Louis ETS researcher David Kuneman and colleague Michael McFadden that looked at the effect of smoking bans on the heart attack rates of entire states. Kuneman and McFadden found that smoking bans had no effect on heart attack rates. Dr. Siegel says of the Kuneman/McFadden heart attack study:

"While this study certainly does not prove that smoking bans have no effect on heart attack admissions, what it does is demonstrate that when one examines population-based data for an entire state, one does not find any evidence of a dramatic decline in heart attacks immediately following the implementation of smoking bans. This casts serious doubt on the conclusion of the Helena, Pueblo, Piedmont, and Bowling Green studies. If smoking bans truly cause an immediate and dramatic decline in heart attacks, on the order of a 25% to 50% reduction, then why do we not observe any evident decline in heart attacks when entire states implement smoking bans."
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/search?q=McFadden+Kuneman+heart+attack

Atomic Cowboy owner Chip Schloss on smoking bans in St. Louis.

I haven't read anything in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch yet about Senator Joan Bray's new proposed Missouri smoking ban. Atomic Cowboy owner Chip Schloss and I square off about Senator Bray's new law in the latest issue of the Vital Voice, though Chip seems to be advocating smoke-free bars rather than smoking bans. Though I am pretty happy with my 1000 word thumbnail defense of the freedom of Missouri bars, the editor apparently couldn't believe that the strongest finding of the 1998 WHO secondhand smoke study was that children exposed to secondhand smoke were 22 percent LESS likely to develop lung cancer later in life. So he changed my "less" to "greater". Oh well, that changes the meaning a bit! But I am grateful that at least one St. Louis paper will allow a voice on the science of secondhand smoke other than that of the American Cancer Society.
http://www.thevitalvoice.com/commentary.shtml