Hennepin Anti-Smoke Jihadis: "Duck Is Dog!"

Disclaimer: Other than the odd cigar (I'm up to maybe a couple a month) I don't smoke. Smoking doesn't especially bother me - I worked at radio stations where I was the only non-smoker. If smoke started bothering me, I never had a problem going to where there wasn't as much of it. It always seemed fairly simple to me.

I worked in bars for years, and - this is important - knew when I applied for the jobs that there was going to be some smoke involved.

Oh, yeah - and I learned that if something walked, talked, smelled, tasted and smoked like a duck, it was most likely a duck. Not a dog.

In Hennepin County, as support grows to amend its draconian smoking ban, the ban proponents are saying that all that stuff you see with your own eyes is a Malamut, not a Mallard.

The Strib:

Hennepin County's six-month-old smoking ban has had a mixed impact on bars and restaurants, showing that suburban businesses had declining liquor sales but that those in Minneapolis had better-than-average liquor and food sales, a new county study says.

The study, which looked at sales in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and was released Wednesday, has become a centerpiece in a debate over whether the state's most populous county should scale back its far-reaching ordinance. The ban, which took effect in March, made Hennepin County the largest unit of government in Minnesota to prohibit smoking in bars and restaurants.

The study was a apparently not designed to specifically settle this squabble - and it doesn't:

The study said that liquor sales at 497 outlets grew at a slower rate during the second quarters of 2004 and 2005, when the ban began to take effect, than they did during the same period in 2003 and 2004. Anoka County, which does not have a smoking ban and lies immediately north of Hennepin County, had increasing liquor sales during the same time, the study said.

However, the study added that "it is not known whether, or to what extent, this is due to the Hennepin County smoking ordinance."

Evidence that it's a duck: Our own eyes. I don't hang out in a lot of bars (Keegans is about it for me), but if you roll all my friends and acquaintances together, there'd be a couple of very dedicated bar-hoppers - and there's no doubt. The ban has gutted the night business. It can't be a coincidence that just as the bar season should have been picking up - as part of the rhythm of the seasons in bars - it fell through the floor. Bars that in every previous season had brought on new staff were laying off. Bars that had been full on Ladies Night every spring were sucking pond water. It's a duck.

On the dog side:

"I would consider any further action by the board a step backward," said Commissioner Gail Dorfman, a chief proponent of the smoking ban. Dorfman said that the study was "somewhat inconclusive" and that the data were based on a small sample size.

"I don't know what the next step is," she said.

Oh, I think you're going to see a bigger sample size, and pretty soon here.

Posted by Mitch at September 22, 2005 05:31 AM | TrackBack