Bar Owners Seek New Delay in Smoking Ban

With only four months left before a state law snuffs out smoking in clubs and bars, owners of many of Los Angeles’ most venerable nightspots and restaurants pleaded Thursday for another delay from state legislators.

“We are not shoving cigarette smoking down everyone’s throat,” said Kate Nelson, owner of the Palace nightclub in Hollywood. “What we are trying to do is reach an accommodation.”

If the law goes into effect, said Betty Gray, owner of the Desert Room in Gardena, “We’ll have some healthy employees, but they’ll be in the unemployment lines.”

In 1994, with indoor smoking widely under attack, the Legislature banned smoking in most California workplaces, but exempted places like hotel lobbies, bars, taverns and casinos until January 1997.

Last September, lawmakers delayed that ban until January 1998, stipulating that smoking could still be allowed in bars after that date if owners met yet-to-be-developed state or federal standards designed to reduce employees’ exposure to tobacco smoke. Cigar smoking would also be banned.

The bar owners, who gathered at Chasen’s in Beverly Hills, said Thursday that a smoking ban would result in a severe loss of income for their businesses.

“We recognize that our economic viability depends on our being able to accommodate all segments of our society, all segments of the tourism industry,” Nelson said. “And if we don’t get some help, we are going to be severely impacted by what’s going to happen come Jan. 1.”

Representatives from establishments such as Le Dome, Jimmy’s, the Peninsula Hotel and the Improv also decried what they described as delays by the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health in setting standards for reducing bar employees’ exposure to tobacco smoke.

Jack Gribbon, state political director for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, said the union wants the ban delayed out of concern for workers’ jobs, although it is concerned about members’ health in smoky workplaces.

“We want federal OSHA to make it a priority to finish the studies that have been started, to determine what acceptable levels of filtration are,” Gribbon said.

John Howard, a spokesman for Cal/OSHA, said bar owners’ complaints are misplaced. He said legislators did not require Cal/OSHA to set standards, but merely gave the agency the option.

“We have no duty to do it, and we’re not doing it,” Howard said. “At this point in time, we’re not working on a standard for tobacco smoke.”

Bar owners hope to find relief in a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Edward Vincent (D-Inglewood). The bill, which calls for a delay of the bar ban until 1999, has so far been approved only by the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee.

The state law will supersede a Los Angeles city law that now bans smoking in restaurants but permits it in restaurant bars.

Although some other major Los Angeles County cities such as Santa Monica, Long Beach and Pasadena already ban restaurant smoking, other cities permit separate smoking and nonsmoking areas. The restaurateurs said a statewide ban would cost them significant numbers of tourists from Europe and Japan, where smoking is much more prevalent than in California. Those foreign smokers, they said, will bypass Los Angeles in favor of tobacco-friendly states like Nevada.

“We are getting ready to become the only state that basically says, ‘If you smoke, we don’t want you,’ ” Nelson said.