According to the old adage, where there is smoke, there is fire. But when cigarettes are involved, where there is smoke, there is cultural pressure. Throughout the United States, smokers are an ostracized class, forced to flee their traditional public haunts to take a drag where they can.
And for good reason. Strong medical evidence undergirds the dramatic change in public attitudes -- the lesson has been absorbed that tobacco takes not just a deadly toll on smokers but also on those who live and work with them. Even restaurants and bars, which had been a last redoubt for tobacco use, are increasingly becoming smoke-free, either as a result of proprietors making business decisions or responding to legislative bans.
With large states such as California and Florida, as well as cities such as New York, bringing respectability to the notion of smoking bans in restaurants, it is not surprising that the Allegheny County Health Department flirted with the idea of enacting one of its own. But, in reviewing this possibility, it has met a formidable roadblock: state law.
The Pennsylvania Clean Indoor Air Act, passed in 1988, is not an outright ban: It stipulates that restaurants with 75 or more seats provide a nonsmoking section. Establishments with fewer seats must post signs if they don't have a nonsmoking section. The law makes clear that governmental bodies such as Allegheny County are precluded from enacting their own bans, although existing local laws were grandfathered in. Restaurants in Pittsburgh, for example, must have a nonsmoking section if they have 50 or more table seats (although food sales must equal 80 percent of total revenue for the ordinance to apply).
SmokeFree Pennsylvania, an activist group that supports smoking bans in restaurants, see this law as "a thorn in the side" and says half a dozen communities have had no-smoking ordinances stamped out by the law. Understandably, the strategic interest of such groups is to win one victory at a time in hopes of covering most of the state.
But good public policy suggests that relief properly lies with the Legislature, which has the power to toughen the rules and have them apply uniformly. Fifteen years have passed since the state law passed, and the public consensus on smoking has changed. Talk of "smokers' rights" has dissipated like smoke itself. It is recognized that a smoker still has the right to light up in his own house, but everywhere else other people's rights come into play.
As the example of California makes clear, restaurants and bars can still thrive with smoke-free environments. Pennsylvania ought to have one clear rule that doesn't make one establishment fear it will lose customers to another across a municipal border where the anti-smoking rules are more permissive. The Allegheny County Health Department was right to think about what to do. It should now be up to the Legislature to do it.
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