With this new law, New Jersey shut the doors on smokers by instituting a smoking ban in all public indoor places. The only exception are casinos, where public health has never really been top-of-mind for anyone anyway. The ban represents a huge victory for anti-smoking activists in the ongoing debate about the right to breathe clean air versus the right to privately wage war on one’s own respiratory system. Critics also consider it a blow to the rights of small business owners, as well as business owners of average or above average heights.
Interestingly, smokers aren’t the only people who had a rough April 15. It’s also tax deadline day, the day both Abraham Lincoln and Joey Ramone died, the day the Titanic sunk, and the day the first McDonald’s opened. A pretty bleak day in the annals of American health, but I see no coincidence other than the fact Abe and Joey were both pretty tall.
What weighed heavily on the minds of state legislators was not so much restaurant patrons, but restaurant workers. According to a 2005 study by New Jersey GASP (Group Against Smoking Pollution), restaurant workers in New Jersey smoking-permitted sites were exposed to pollution levels nearly three times the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) standard. Bar workers in particular were exposed to pollution levels eight times as high as the EPA standard. All this information about GASP and the EPA left me thinking: the EPA could really use a catchier acronym.
The GASP report also revealed that smoke-permitting bars are 28 times as polluted as smoke-free bars, although, for many, they’re also 10 times less silly. Frankly, a smoke-free bar is like non-alcoholic beer, a Victoria’s Secret winter wear catalog, or a clean political campaign. Someone’s missing the fun part. There’s definitely something about beer, loud noise, sticky floors, large-screen television sets, and obnoxious behavior that just makes people want to smoke. Or go to college.
It’s too early to know the real effects of the law in New Jersey bars, but in California, which instituted a ban on smoking in bars in 1998, bartenders showed improvement in their respiratory health within months. Researchers surveyed 400 bartenders and found that their shortness of breath and coughing were cut by 40 percent. Even more astonishingly after talking with these 400 bartenders, the same researchers learned how to make Vodka martinis, cheat on their wives, and tie cherry stems with their tongues.
The new law will have a huge impact on local bars like St. James's Gate, Cryan’s, and Bunny’s. Gone is the need for special sections for non-smokers, hopefully replaced by sections for children who scream, run around, and eat crayons.
New Jersey resident Eric Burbank, who had enjoyed smoking at local hangouts, thinks the new law discriminates against his rights as a smoker. “Before the law, the nonsmokers had a choice to go to bars and eateries that were smoke free. Now what is my choice?” he said. “And what about all the money I have paid in tobacco taxes all these years. I didn't hear anyone complaining about my smoking while they were using my tax dollars.” Of course, if you’ve been to a bar, you know it’s hard to hear anything, so maybe Eric just missed it.
Another 21-year Maplewood resident, Paul Sanchez, calls the ban a blow to civil liberties. “What we don't need is more of the government telling business owners how they have to run their businesses. If people have a problem with smoke then they should find a different place to go,” he says.
But many local families feel they shouldn’t have to find a different place to go. And should restaurant workers bear the burden of finding a job that doesn’t pollute their bodies? It’s one thing to resist stuffing your face with munchkins when you take a job at Dunkin Donuts, but probably another to bring your own oxygen.
Some nonsmokers are sympathetic to the businesses that have to change their ways. South Orange resident Amie Brockway-Metcalf, who quit smoking four years ago, said she “couldn’t handle the smoke” before. Now she intends on going back to all of those bars and restaurants to help make up for lost business due to the ban. Note to Amie’s family: She’ll probably need someone to drive her home.
GASP wants you to know that the law is targeting smoke more so than smokers. Smokers are actually welcome anywhere so long as they don’t smoke, in which case they now become “people formerly known as smokers,” “the respiratorially-challenged,” or just the “bad breath, yellow teeth, hacking cough bunch.” See? Goodbye negative labeling and name-calling!
As a rule of thumb, I generally support laws that protect people from each other, but not laws that protect people from themselves. Research seems to prove that smoking falls into the former category, and the plain simple truth is that smoking is a disgusting habit that will ultimately kill you.
With that in mind, maybe society is right to clean its house a little bit in the name of healthy employees, happy families, and silly bars. Or as Rick would say, “Here’s not coughing at you, kid.”
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