by James Repace, MSc., Health Physicist

The New York City Council has proposed expansion of the current New York City Clean Indoor Air Law adopted in 1995. Current law provides that smoking is prohibited in dining areas of restaurants of more than 35 persons, in 75% of outdoor restaurant seating areas, and in workplaces, except in private offices. Exceptions include enclosed stand-alone bars, the enclosed bar areas of restaurants, and open bar areas of restaurants if 6 or more feet from the dining area. The current law reduces but does not eliminate secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure due to recirculation of smoke from private offices of smokers, and may increase restaurant and bar worker exposure for workers who must work in smoking areas & in small restaurants while it reduces restaurant patrons’ exposures.

The proposed revision of the Smokefree Air Act extends restrictions against smoking to all restaurants regardless of size, and includes restaurant bars. It extends the restrictions against smoking in private offices to offices in which only one person works. While these increased restrictions will further reduce public exposure to ETS, they still permit workers to be exposed in beverage service lounges in restaurants, and allow toxic tobacco smoke to be recirculated in office buildings from single person offices.

I testified at the recent New York City hearing and also a year ago in preliminary hearings. Although I was on the printed testimony schedule both times to testify about 11 AM with Roswell Park researchers who had performed surveys which showed that New York City Restaurants had not lost business after the law was passed in 1995, the Council Committee kept us waiting for hours, despite the repeated requests to allow those with trains and planes to catch to go on time. By the time we testified all the media had gone away. I got the distinct impression that messages that ventilation cannot conceivably control ETS or that New York City business did not lose money from a partial smoking ban were not welcomed by the Council. Moreover, Mayor Guiliani has announced that he will not support a revision of the bill, and prevented his Health Commissioner from testifying.

It is clear that the official hospitality industry organizations in both the US and Canada have been co-opted by the the tobacco companies and are acting as big tobacco’s front organizations. Even air cleaner makers are now making false health claims that air cleaning is a viable control for ETS. I believe that the ventilation committee provision has been placed in the proposed New York Legislation at the behest of the hospitality industry in order to thwart smoke-free legisilation. This kind of committee plays completely into the the tobacco industry’s “accomodations” and “options” programs which ensure that nonsmokers will continue to breathe toxic secondhand smoke.

By Rose Palazzolo

March 24 — Holding a cigarette, taking slow, languorous drags and exhaling puffs of smoke above a just-devoured plate of food in a favored restaurant is comforting and downright essential to a lot of people and, some say, especially to New Yorkers. 

That is why a group of smokers, bar and restaurant owners are expected to descend on New York's City Hall today to protest a proposal by City Council Speaker and rumored mayoral candidate Peter Vallone that would further limit smoking in restaurants throughout the city.

Scott LoBaido, an artist from Staten Island who gained notoriety for hurling fistfuls of manure at the Brooklyn Museum to protest an art that included a dung-spattered Virgin Mary, is leading the protest. 

"Speakeasies are going to come back to New York again," professed LoBaido, referring to places operating illegally where patrons can enter with a secret password. "If no one can smoke anywhere in New York, it will be time for the speakeasy." 

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One Soho restaurant owner, who did not want to reveal his name, said he ignores the Smoke-Free Air Act and does not have a restricted smoking area in his establishment.

"Many of my customers are French or sophisticated. They they want to smoke after eating and if I don't let them they won't come," he said. "I've only paid the fine a few times." 

As for his part, Vallone said that the new law is "critical to protecting employees of establishments where smoking is permissible and that the protestors are misguided in their fury over the proposal. No one wants to breathe someone else's smoke at a restaurant."

The expansion of the smoking ban would not allow smoking in all restaurants where food is 40 percent of the revenue of the business, regardless of seat number. It would also tighten restrictions on smoking in private offices and outdoor dining areas. Currently, if a restaurant in New York seats less than 30 people smoking is allowed, or if there is an area, usually near the bar, that is separated from the rest of the restaurant smoking is allowed.

"The smoking situation is one in which restaurants should be able to make the decision on their own," said Chuck Hunt, executive vice president of the Greater New York Chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association. "It's an issue of choice and not one the City Council should be mandating."