Restaurant Press Releases

Most Restaurateurs See Smoking Ban on Horizon

CONTACT:
Paul McIntyre or
Anne Naughton
(916) 780-0226
Immediate Release: April 16, 2002

A national survey of independent restaurants, chain restaurants and state restaurant associations just released by the nonprofit group Kids Involuntarily Inhaling Secondhand Smoke (KIISS), revealed that the majority of restaurateurs believe smoking will be banned in restaurants within the next ten years.

Chain restaurants were the most optimistic with 80 percent believing restaurant smoking will be banned within ten years, followed by 66 percent of independant restaurants who believe it will happen. In sharp contrast to the chain and independent restaurant operators, only 19 percent of state restaurant association executives believe restaurant smoking will be banned in ten years.

Restaurant associations also differed sharply when asked if they consider secondhand smoke a health and safety issue. Only 41 percent of association executives thought it was, whereas 80 percent of chain operators and 92 percent of independent restaurateurs think secondhand smoke is a matter of health and safety.

When asked if ventilation systems were the solution to solving secondhand smoke issues in restaurants, 66 percent of restaurant associations felt it was a solution, followed by 25 percent of independents and 20 percent of chain operators who said restaurant ventilation was the answer.

Ventilation systems have been promoted by the tobacco industry for years as the answer to secondhand smoke concerns in restaurants. "While these ventilation systems have done much to remove tobacco odor from the air, unfortunately, none of them can remove the 43 carcinogens in tobacco smoke," said KIISS President and CEO Paul McIntyre. Furthermore, he said, "Even if you could remove secondhand smoke from the non-smoking section, workers serving customers in the smoking section would still be exposed to the carcinogens in secondhand smoke."

While doctors, lawyers, schoolteachers, bankers and many other service professionals enjoy healthy smoke-free work environments nowadays, according to McIntyre, most restaurant workers do not.

A National Cancer Institute study (Gerlac, et al., 1997) pointed out that because their work is heavily concentrated in the foodservice industry, workers ages 15-19, are least likely to be protected by smoke-free workplace policies.

The city of El Paso, Texas enacted a ban much like California's in January of this year, and many other cities such as Tempe, Arizona will soon vote on similar laws. Statewide, New York and Florida will also consider smoking bans this year.

"It's not a matter of if smoking bans will cover all workplaces, it's only a matter of when," said McIntyre. California, with 12 percent of the nation's population, has already lived successfully with a workplace and restaurant smoking ban for more than seven years. So it is possible.

McIntyre added, "When smoking was banned on domestic airline flights in 1990 many said it would be impossible for a smoker to fly coast to coast for five hours without having a cigarette, and thus many customers would avoid flying and airlines would lose business. What happened? The 1990's brought the airline industry the greatest growth rates it has ever seen."

"Times have changed and businesses need to adapt to these changes," McIntyre said. Today there are half as many smokers in America as there were four decades ago.

Furthermore, a number of studies released in the past 12 years have concluded that secondhand smoke kills 53,000 people annually, and the Environmental Protection Agency has declared secondhand tobacco as a Group A carcinogen - a known cause of cancer in humans.

Those surveyed by KIISS included 46 of the nation's largest restaurant chain operators, 40 independent restaurateurs, and the restaurant association executives in those 45 states that still allow smoking in restaurants.

KIISS was founded in 2000 by those people influential in passing California's workplace smoking ban, AB 13, in 1994. Anyone interested in more information on helping restaurants become smoke free can obtain videos, pamphlets or decals at www.kiiss.org.