No smoking law will be good for business

Orcas islanders Scott Lancaster and Fred Vinson decided to have a beer late Friday afternoon, so they went over to the Lower Tavern and sat down at the bar. It was a place that they had rarely, if ever, visited before.

The reason? They didn't want to breathe second-hand smoke.

Those days are over, in the wake of the approval by state voters of an initiative which bans smoking in public facilities. It took effect last Thursday, Dec. 8.

Not everybody, however, is pleased with the initiative. Several smokers who entered Vern's Bayside Lounge last weekend stormed out the door after being told that they wouldn't be allowed to smoke. They didn't get much sympathy from owner Belinda Landon, however.

She told them, "You can pout, but you're going to have to get used to it. It's the law."

But the smokers are in the minority, and the Lower Tavern's Mike Boettger is convinced that the initiative is of great benefit to his business. "It helps me," he told The Sounder.

"The large percentage of those who made comments to me about the new law are glad there is no smoking. I don't expect to lose many customers." (Just 13 percent of the adults in San Juan County are smokers, according to the county's Department of Health and Community Services.)

Boettger even expects most of the smokers who formerly patronized the Lower Tavern to return. They stayed away last weekend, perhaps to protest the new law. "The social aspect will bring them back," Boettger said.

Landon, at Vern's Bayside Lounge, isn't nearly as optimistic about the initiative's economic impact, but she believes that the lounge won't be hurt either. "Business was down a little bit last weekend," she said, "but we have seen people that we never saw before, and others have told us that they'll come to the bar now. I feel we'll break even." Landon also believes that customers' needs for a social life will convince them to return.

Landon also observed last weekend that the smokers who visited her lounge last weekend were lighting up less frequently than in the past. Those who previously had been smoking as many as 10 or 12 cigarettes during an evening at Vern's were reducing their number to one or two. The reason, she believes, is the provision of the initiative which requires smokers to go outside, a minimum of 25 feet from the lounge, before lighting up.

The only problem with the new law, Boettger and Landon agree, is that it's going to create more work for them cleaning up the large number of cigarette butts in the vicinity of their establishments that will have to be removed. "I feel that I will have to clean up my parking lot (regularly)," Boettger admitted. "I can't police it."

But Scott Lancaster feels that's a small price to pay for smoke-free bars. "I think it's great," he said of the new law, agreeing that it will help business for Boettger at The Lower Tavern. "He'll see people he hasn't seen before," Lancaster said.

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