A new study shows that banning smoking in the bars and taverns of some California towns does not harm those businesses' profits, even when nearby communities allow smoking in drinking establishments.
The study, along with a 1994 study by the same California researcher of restaurant sales nationally before and after anti-smoking laws were imposed, has results that closely match comparable figures in Utah, Tax Commission officials say.California is phasing in a smoking ban for bars and taverns. Utah has not taken that step.
Doug Macdonald, commission chief economist, says restaurant sales figures for 1994 - the year before Utah's strict Indoor Clean Air Act took effect - and for 1996 show taxable sales have increased from 26.5 percent to 46 percent, depending on the class of restaurant reporting sales-tax revenue.
Macdonald and Steven Hadden, communication health specialist, Utah Health Department, conclude that local restaurants weren't harmed economically by the smoking ban, as some had feared.
Smoking is still allowed in Utah bars, taverns and private clubs. And interestingly enough, Macdonald's figures show that while sales in family and fast-food restaurants have gone up an average 36.4 percent over two years, sales in private clubs have gone up only 38 percent. Not a great difference.
So, smokers didn't necessarily quit their neighborhood restaurants and join private clubs just to enjoy a cigarette during a meal, as some restaurant owners feared.
Macdonald said sales in fast-food restaurants have gone up 29 percent from 1994 to 1996; sales in what are known as theme restaurants - like the Olive Garden - are up 46 percent; sales in family restaurants are up 26.5 percent.
Beer tavern sales have jumped a huge 106 percent over that two-year span, partly because a number of micro-brew establishments opened in the mid-1990s. The number of taverns have increased from 65 to 131 in just two years.
Said Hadden: "People asked, `Where can we smoke and have dinner?' But what's happened is that people either smoke before they go into a restaurant or smoke when they come out. It is only a change in (smoking) habits of an hour or so, and they are doing that."
The Utah ban on smoking in public places took effect Jan. 1, 1995.
The UCSF study is a bit surprising, for it shows that bars and taverns in cities that have banned smoking in all public places have not been harmed economically.
The study was conducted by Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at UCSF. The study compared bar sales in the first seven California cities and towns that have banned smoking in bars with bars in similar cities that allow smoking.
"Local ordinances that make bars smoke-free appear to have no impact on business," Glantz said in an article in the American Journal of Public Health published this week.
Looking at the restaurant sales tax revenue in Utah, Macdonald said while some individual restaurants may have seen different results, "Overall, the restaurant industry did not die" because of the Utah Indoor Clean Air Act.
Just the opposite. "The convenience of (eating out at a restaurant) more than offsets" smokers' displeasure at not being able to smoke in the restaurant of their choice, said Macdonald.
Utah is one of only a half dozen states that bans - statewide - smoking in restaurants. "We've had a number of compliments from tourists, who say it is very nice that they can go into any (Utah) restaurant and enjoy a meal and not be bothered by second-hand smoke," Hadden said.