With Ireland due to introduce strict anti-smoking laws early next year, Ian Kilroy reports from Boston on how drinkers there are adjusting to the city's new smoke-free policy in pubs
All over Boston, smokers huddle together outside bars, nervously shifting from one foot to the other as they pull on their cigarettes. Smoking has been banned in the city's bars and restaurants since the beginning of last month. Smokers are now outcasts in their own city, a situation most other people are pretty happy about.
It seems the tide has finally turned against smoking. Once only California scorned the weed that kills 53,000 Americans a year through passive smoking. Now the states of New York and Connecticut have followed suit, and Massachusetts, of which Boston is the capital, is poised to prohibit smoking across the state.
It is similar to the ban that Ireland, like Norway, is preparing to introduce. And although the Vintners' Federation of Ireland is set to fight it tooth and nail, saying it will have dire consequences, the new controls look set to come into force in January. So do the vintners have a point, and what can we learn from the Boston experience? The man behind Boston's smoking ban, John Auerbach, executive director of Boston Public Health Commission, says Irish vintners have nothing to worry about. "There just isn't any evidence that there has been any negative impact on sales," he says. "Our experience is that people adjust, in the same way that people adjusted to not smoking on airplanes. People didn't stop flying."
Auerbach says Boston Public Health Commission has no hard data yet on the effects of the new controls, but it has studied data from California and other parts of the US where smoking has been banned from bars and restaurants for some time. "There is no evidence from these areas of any discernible change or drop in bar business," he says.
Going around Boston it is easy to believe Auerbach: the city's bars are as busy and buzzing as ever, and publicans have found it remarkably easy to ensure their customers step outside to smoke.
Establishments found breaking the ban can expect fines of up to $1,000, but first-time offenders may get off with a warning. In many cases smoking inspectors' attention is drawn to violations by members of the public. As Auerbach points out, not only were 80 per cent of submissions in the consultative process leading up to the legislation in support of the ban, but now it is in effect the public are eager to see it enforced.
But in the US, just as in Ireland, there has been a vocal minority against the ban. The New York Post published a poll claiming that bars and restaurants in New York city had lost between 25 and 40 per cent of their business since the ban on smoking began there in April. The New York-based Irish Voice published a piece against the ban, arguing that businesses would close and there would be fewer opportunities in the bar sector, which has traditionally employed thousands of Irish people.
At best such claims are exaggerated. "Before the law passed a lot of businesses in Boston were afraid of it," says Jon Sweeney, manager of Cheers, the bar from the television comedy. "But now that it's come into effect and they've seen no drop-off the local business owners are more in favour of it."
Sweeney points out one problem associated with the ban, however: people tend to loiter outside bars while they smoke. "There's more likely to be trouble when you have people hanging out on the street when they've had a few drinks," he says. "People also try to smuggle drinks out with them when they go out for a smoke, and that's also a problem because drinking is illegal on the streets."
But for bartenders such as Patrick Keane, who works in the Corrib Bar on Harvard Street, the controls on smoking are welcome. "It's a good thing; places are cleaner and healthier. They've got used to it here, and they'll get used to it in Ireland. There's no doubt that Irish people will still go out for a few drinks." The difference is that they'll be drinking in a healthier environment, and bartenders won't be suffering the effects of working in a hazardous environment in years to come.
Banning smoking will harm family-run provincial pubs, vintners told a meeting hosted by the Health and Safety Authority in Sligo on Tuesday. It was the first in a series of public-consultation meetings before the ban, which applies to pubs, restaurants and other workplaces, isintroduced in January.
Opponents of the legislation claimed that bar staff who have spent all their working lives in pubs have suffered no ill effects from cigarette smoke. Local publicans expressed concerns about how the ban might be enforced, pointing to a recent incident in New York, where a doorman was stabbed after he asked a customer to stop smoking.
A publican based in Sligo town said that, in a straw poll of his customers, only 19 of the 220 people he asked favoured the ban.
Pat Harvey, chief executive of the North Western Health Board, countered by pointing out that 7,000 people die each year because of smoking, a figure that would "wipe out" a town such as Bundoran in 12 months.
Some at the meeting pointed out that it was in vintners' interest to oppose the ban. Harvey suggested a separate consultation process, to include vintners only, might be held to debate issues relating to public houses.