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Anti-smoking nightmare on Main Street

By Jim Waters

Like a recurring nightmare, anti-smoking extremists keep popping up in communities across Kentucky as part of a well-funded campaign that threatens the constitutional rights of private property owners. Their latest target is Georgetown, where elected officials are considering enacting Kentucky’s most oppressive smoking ban.

While we loathe smoking as much as these extremists, we dislike even more the force of government being used to ban a legal activity within the private property of business owners.

According to a Lexington Herald-Leader story, 20 percent of private work sites still allow smoking in Lexington, which currently has the commonwealth’s most restrictive policy. However, if the ordinance being considered in Georgetown passes, smoking would be allowed only in private homes, a few hotel rooms, clubs without employees and retail tobacco stores.

Demonstrating their unselfish concern for the health of their fellow Kentuckians, smoking-ban proponents justify government-imposed smoking bans on the premise they will eliminate the unintentional inhalation of second-hand smoke. But recent developments suggest that altruism might not be their only motivation.

For example, Lexington Vice Mayor Mike Scanlon has been a leading proponent of government-enforced smoking bans across the state, including speaking at citizen forums in Elsemere and Louisville.

His presentation usually focuses on the need to protect employees and customers from the dangers of second-hand smoke. Yet it appears that there’s much more at stake. Scanlon also happens to be a founding member and CEO of Thomas & King, which owns 75 Applebee’s restaurants across the U.S.

After Lexington banned smoking in all public places in April 2004, Scanlon executed a marketing decision to ban smoking in all of his company’s restaurants. But apparently over the short term, the policy has not generated the profits he had hoped to attract from a more health-conscious clientele.

As a result, Scanlon is using his governmental position to deny other business owners the same opportunity to determine smoking policies for their companies. If, as he claims, preventing customers from lighting up helps instead of harming businesses, why is Scanlon lobbying so hard to persuade Georgetown policymakers to enact a smoking ban in their city?

It’s likely his motivation stems from the fact that an O’Charley’s – which still chooses to maintain a smoking section – is located right across U.S. 60 from a Scanlon-owned Applebee’s restaurant.

It must be frustrating for Scanlon to watch customers who used to frequent his business walk across the street for a drink … and a smoke. In fact, if going nonsmoking is such a great idea, why hasn’t O’Charley’s responded by eliminating their smoking section to tempt these imaginary customers back to their restaurant?

Scanlon apparently looks at a restrictive smoking ban as an opportunity to “level the playing field.” But the playing field is already “level” in Georgetown. Business owners, not government nannies at City Hall, are making the decision about what’s best for their customers.

Rather than making the existing playing field even more level, a restrictive ban would create an entirely new playing field, threatening the profitability of Georgetown businesses. Such consideration reinforces the warning of George Washington, who said: “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force.”

Norman Wilson, who owns the Galactic Alley Bowling Centers in Georgetown, says local policymakers promised they would only “look into” regulating smoking.

“This proposal is a ban in its harshest form,” Wilson said. “It’s not what’s best for business owners. Some researchers say that smoking bans do not affect businesses, but that is just not true.”

Research being used to influence smoking bans around the state lacks credibility.

A current study by University of Kentucky scholar Ellen Hahn purports to garner research on the effects of smoking bans on employee turnover and training. But Hahn will gather her data from employees of Vice Mayor Scanlon’s 75 Applebee’s restaurants. Can she spell “c-o-n-f-l-i-c-t-o-f-i-n-t-e-r-e-s-t?”

Hahn has received nearly a half-million dollars from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to fund her effort to promote smoking bans in all restaurants just as Scanlon has done at Applebee’s.

While local business owners cannot possibly finance their case as extravagantly as Hahn’s research effort, they do have these truths on their side: Mike Scanlon has a conflict-of-interest and should acknowledge it; and Georgetown’s proposed smoking ban is unsound public policy.

It should be rejected by council members who are entrusted with the duty of determining what’s in the best interest of all citizens rather than simply protecting the self-interests of a few.

– Jim Waters is director of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank.

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