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SF cops to issue smoking tickets
By Lance Williams and Marianne Costantinou OF THE EXAMINER STAFF |
Friday, January 15, 1999
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Warning: Cigarette smoking in bars may be hazardous to your wallet.
And that isn't the surgeon general talking, but The City's top cop.
Nearly one year after the Legislature banned smoking in every bar in the state, Police Chief Fred Lau this week sent a letter to all 2,400 bars and restaurants in San Francisco, declaring that police will soon begin busting bar patrons who defy the law by lighting up anyway.
The cost of a smoking ticket: $76.
In the letter, which also was signed by Health Director Mitchell Katz, Lau said teams of officers and health inspectors will make surprise visits to The City's estimated 864 bars to ensure that the smoking ban is being honored.
"Visits will be unannounced and will focus on bars or taverns where there have been complaints about patrons smoking," Lau wrote. "We recommend that you inform your patrons who are smoking at your business that they will be subject to penalty."
Lau's letter was good news to health advocates, who had groused for months that The City was ignoring the year-old law.
In recent weeks, some health groups had even begun threatening a lawsuit aimed at forcing The City to comply.
"San Francisco is the worst place in the whole state on this," said Dr. Stanton Glantz, a professor at UC-San Francisco and an anti-tobacco activist.
A recent survey by the Health Department showed the no-smoking law is being ignored in about half the bars in The City. It's a different story in restaurants that also have bars - 90 percent of them are smoke-free, the survey indicates. Smokers respond
News of the renewed campaign against smokers got only "Oh, no, not that again" snickers and groans Thursday night at some Russian Hill bars where ashtrays are as much a part of the decor as the stools.
"People are still going to smoke in bars, no matter what," said Ursula McGrath, 26, leaning forward for her boyfriend to light her Marlboro Lights cigarette as a bartender made drinks nearby.
"If people don't want to smoke, keep them at home," she added. "Smoking has been in bars forever."
Why waste cops' valuable time? was the common refrain - even from bar patrons who don't smoke.
"They should put my tax money in fighting crime or on education rather than trying to stop people from smoking cigarettes," said Victor Hjelm, 21, a nonsmoker.
To Hjelm and others, telling people they can't smoke is an infringement of their rights. Next thing you know, they'll be trying to stop people from drinking.
"I don't smoke cigarettes. I don't like cigarettes, but it don't mean people shouldn't be able to smoke 'em," said Hjelm.
"It's a freedom-of-choice issue," said Gerald Eng, 37, a nonsmoker who is McGrath's boyfriend. "There's more smokers out there than people who die of second-hand smoke. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
The concept that the no-smoking law violates smokers' rights was argued by bar owners - egged on, the health advocates say, by the tobacco companies, who raised a huge outcry when the Legislature enacted the ban. And the tobacco industry began pushing legislation to repeal the ban even before it went into effect. Workplace health
The health groups say the measure is important to protect the health of people who visit bars as well as those who work in them.
"Bars and gaming clubs are workplaces, and we need to protect workers," said Kirk Kleinschmidt of the American Heart Association. "Environmental tobacco smoke is a recognized health toxin."
Karen Licavoli of the American Lung Association said enforcement got off to a slow start in The City.
Early on, the Health Department concentrated on making sure bar owners posted "No Smoking" signs and issuing citations if they took the signs down.
However, under the law as interpreted by the city attorney, Licavoli said, health inspectors had no power to cite a bar patron who was smoking in defiance of the ban. Because the police weren't involved, no one enforced the no-smoking law.
At one point, the health groups took the matter to Mayor Brown. They came away convinced that the go-slow approach was coming from Brown himself, who as speaker of the Assembly had accepted more than $700,000 worth of campaign donations, gifts and legal fees from the tobacco industry.
In July, members of The City's Tobacco-Free Coalition, accompanied by two bar owners who were obeying the no-smoking ban, met with Brown, according to a person who was present.
The bar owners asked Brown to order enforcement of the smoking ban, arguing that bars that complied with the law were losing business to ones that were ignoring it.
"The mayor said he wouldn't go out of his way for this particular law," the source said. "He felt we were going too far." Looking for results
The health groups praised The City for announcing the new enforcement effort and said they expected results.
"When we come back at the end of February and we ask, "How many citations did you issue?' that will tell us how seriously The City is taking enforcement," said the Heart Association's Kleinschmidt.
If The City isn't enforcing the ban, he said, "We'll review all options, including a suit."
Police spokesman Dewayne Tully said Lau was meeting with the Health Department to plot the scope of the enforcement program. No officers have yet been assigned to the project, but Tully said the chief means business.
"The law's been ignored. Patrons continue to smoke in bars, and hence they're meeting on how to enforce it," Tully said.
