Tribune/Debra Reid - Bar USA owner Vanilla Dawg's customers can legally both smoke and eat in her establishment. Customers bring in food prepared and sold in a trailer located behind the bar.
The Nevada Clean Indoor Act, which was passed by a majority of voters in November 2006, prohibits smoking in most public areas. Some business owners, like Vanilla Dawg of Bar USA on S. Virginia Street. in Reno, said they have seen business crumble since.
“I hear people complaining about it all the time,” Dawg said. “I know so many people who won’t go to certain bars because they can’t smoke there. It’s just killed them (bar owners).”
The ban explicitly prohibits smoking in restaurants and bars that serve food, in slot-machine sections of grocery and convenience stores and other public areas. Smoking, however, is still allowed on the gambling floor of casinos.
Now, after the introduction of Senate Bill 372 in the Nevada State Legislature, a possible lift of the smoking ban is on the table, which Dawg and similar small businesses owners support.
“I think it would help so much to bring business back into local bars,” Dawg said. “It’s been a dramatic hit.”
Joe Pirtle, manager of StoneRose Saloon on Rock Boulevard in Sparks, said his business has gone down 70 percent since the ban. He has started closing earlier most nights and is closed entirely on Saturday nights.
“The ban has really hurt the business,” Pirtle said. “It’s an unfair playing field between bars that don’t serve food and bars that have food. We are barely hanging on.”
The bill, which on April 17 passed in the Senate by a vote of 14-5, would essentially lessen the ban by allowing smoking in bars that serve food as long as minors are restricted from entry.
“Smoking has been in bars for many years,” said Sunny Petty, bartender at Sneakers Bar and Grill in Sparks. “I make my own decisions. If I choose to be a bartender, I choose to be around smoke.”
Sneakers’ business has gone down by three-quarters, Petty said.
Main arguments for the bill cite economic repercussions of the smoking ban, namely in lost profits and layoffs among affected businesses.
A recently released study from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas stated otherwise. The 10-year study reviewed restaurant and bar employment rates, openings, taxable sales, slot gaming revenues and slot tax collections in Clark County, concluding that the Nevada Clean Indoor Act has had very little negative economic impact.
In response to the ban, some bars have taken measures to bypass the rule. Bully’s Sports Bar and Grill has opened specific Smoking Bully’s locations where patrons can smoke and have food brought to them from the main Bully’s, which is allowed by the ban.
While Bar USA didn’t sell food in the first place, they have since opened a separate trailer in the side parking lot selling food that patrons are allowed to bring inside the bar.
“As long as the food is prepared outside of the bar area, it’s OK,” Dawg said.
But it is measures like this that have executive director Len Stevens of the Sparks Chamber of Commerce speculating as to how affordable it would be for smaller businesses to take such steps.
“What I hear from businesses, especially the bar/restaurant type, is that there’s definitely a cutback,” Stevens said. “They’re just small businesses, so to enclose the gaming part for them would just be a huge expense. A lot of people weren’t able to do that. Not everybody can afford a kitchen outside.”
Opponents to Senate Bill 372 say the extra expenses of lifting the smoking ban will only fall harder — and this time on the state.
Michael Hackett is a consultant for the Nevada State Medical Association and American Cancer Society and served as the campaign manager for the Nevada Clean Indoor Act back in 2006. Hackett said the repercussions of straining the health care system would only cost the state more money in the long run.
“We’ve always had a hard time funding public health programs and taking care of those who need help the most,” Hackett said. “Nevada has one of the highest rates of uninsured people and a very high number of underinsured people. Add that to the fact we have the lowest physician to patient ratio … makes for a very overworked and overstressed health care delivery … and a financial burden on local governments.”
Since the implementation of the Nevada Clean Indoor Act, Hackett said Nevada’s smoking rates have decreased, which is partially due to smoking awareness and education as well as the act.
“There’s been some real progress,” Hackett said. “Now we have a chance to move off some of those bad lists that Nevada is usually on.”
The bill has since moved on to the Assembly, but no hearing date is scheduled yet.
"Shall Chapter 202 of the Nevada Revised Statutes be amended in order to prohibit smoking tobacco in certain public places, IN ALL BARS WITH A FOOD-HANDLING LICENSE, but excluding gaming areas of casinos and certain other locations?"
Short, sweet, to the point. Unless your grasp of english is that of a 3rd grader, you should understand that that means serving food = no smoking! There's no mention of schools until the explanation, where its pointed out that the smoking ban at schools would be expanded to include the grounds as well as the buildings. If you're reading the explanation, then you should be reading the arguments for and against which made it QUITE clear what the passage of the question would result in. I love the smokers that whine when the people around them get tired of breathing their death clouds and do something about it. You have every right to do whatever you want to yourself as long as it doesn't effect me. Once it does, I for one am going to try and get you to stop. And guess what? 300,000 of my fellow Nevada residents agreed, passing the question by a 10 point margin. Ain't America grand? Now if you want the gov't to just be able to change a voter approved initiative when the mood strikes, I'd suggest moving East...far, far East. I hear North Korea is lovely this time of year.