Selfishly, my main concern about smoking in restaurants and other public places has always been my own comfort. I can detect the presence of a smoker in a car three ahead of mine, so people smoking around me is pretty much unbearable.
It should go without saying, then, that I was at the head of the parade celebrating the October 1st final implementation of the Montana Clean Indoor Air Act. What I hadn’t fully appreciated until just recently was how much the ban could benefit the people who work in these newly smoke-free establishments.
To mark the October 1st event, the Park County Tobacco Use Prevention Program (TUPP) sponsored a presentation by Dr. Richard Shepard, a physician from Helena who has been a strong proponent of smoking bans. One of the authors of a study that showed a measurable drop in heart attacks after Helena’s brief smoking ban in the early 2000s, Shepard has amassed an impressive array of data on the effects of secondhand smoke on nonsmokers.
One of the first statistics he broke out focused on air quality—in this case, measured by the amount of carbon monoxide in the air. (We all remember carbon monoxide from such fun outcomes as poisoning and sickness, right?) Well, according to the data that he presented, spending a night in a New York bar—before that state’s 2003 smoking ban—used to be worse for your health than breathing exhaust fumes at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, which carries about 100,000 cars per day.
While Holland-Tunnel-breathers would encounter carbon monoxide readings of 17 micrograms per cubic meter, someone in a smoky bar would be exposed to 866 micrograms per cubic meter. I believe the technical term for that level of increase is YIKES!
Someone who is exposed to smoking in a workplace like a bar has an almost two times higher risk of heart disease than a non-smoker, Shepard went on to say. In fact, working an eight-hour shift where smoking is allowed actually has the same health risk as active smoking.
Studies have shown mixed effects on businesses throughout the world as cities, states and even entire countries have banned smoking in public places. In many locations, the bar and restaurant business has actually improved. After all, as Shepard pointed out to me in a phone interview after his presentation, smokers represent only 20 percent of the population. “It’s really a question of how well business adapt to the new regulatory environment,” he said.
The health effects are not as hard to quantify. Smoking bans improve health—a lot, according to Shepard. In Helena, when the city’s first, brief smoking ban was enacted, the incidence of heart attacks dropped 39 percent. While that result has been less dramatic in other studies, the figures—usually more than 10 percent—are still telling.
There will always be those who believe that smoking is just one in a vast list of vices that remain legal and so therefore should be free from undue restriction. After all, the argument goes, people can still drink in bars, and everyone knows that drinking can also be hazardous to your health.
The difference is that the person drinking next to me at the Murray is not forcing his or her alcohol down my throat. Before the first of the month, if I was sitting next to someone who was smoking a cigarette, I might as well have been taking drags off of it, since my body was having the same reaction as a smoker’s. Multiply that exponentially to get an idea of what the average bartender or wait staff experienced in a smoky bar over a career. I just can’t be too sad about the end of that era.
NB: A version of this appeared in this month's Bozeman Chronicle Business to Business section.
