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Public Prefers Smoke-Free Bars
Eliminating smoking in bars would increase business for these establishments, according to a study released Tuesday December 2 at a New York City press briefing jointly sponsored by the American Medical Association and American Public Health Association. An overwhelming majority of Massachusetts adults - 89 percent - said that they would go out to bars just as often or more often than they do now if all bars were made smoke-free. This study, the first of its kind in Massachusetts, refutes claims by the tobacco industry that smoke-free bar laws would cause economic hardship for bar owners. The study was conducted by Lois Biener, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts (Boston) Center for Survey Research and Michael Siegel, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor of public health at Boston University School of Public Health and will appear in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
Biener and Siegel found that ending smoking in all bars would have no impact on the frequency of bar patronage for 69 percent of Massachusetts adults. But 20 percent of survey respondents said they would go out to bars more often if all bars became smoke-free. Only 11 percent said they would go out to bars less often.
The survey uncovered a large, potential new market for bars among nonsmokers. Fifteen percent of adults in Massachusetts stated that they had avoided going to bars because of the secondhand smoke. And 10 percent of people who never go to bars said they would start going if smoking were eliminated. This translates into 120,000 new customers for bars and clubs in Massachusetts if secondhand smoke is eliminated in these establishments.
Contrary to what many people assume, the majority of frequent bar users in Massachusetts - 78 percent - are nonsmokers. Only 22 percent of frequent bar users in the state are smokers.
The study adds to the growing evidence that eliminating smoking in bars and restaurants to protect workers from secondhand smoke is not only good for health, but good for business as well. A study in last month's American Journal of Public Health, conducted by Dr. Stanton Glantz and Lisa Smith of the University of California, San Francisco, found that there was no decrease in bar sales in 7 California communities that eliminated smoking in all bars.
According to Siegel, the tobacco industry and its local ally - the Massachusetts Restaurant Association - continue to tell Boards of Health around the state that smoke-free restaurant and bar ordinances will hurt business. "It is time for the Massachusetts Restaurant Association to stop misleading policy makers. All of the evidence shows that protecting the health of bar and restaurant workers can be done without harming business."
Previous research by Siegel has shown that bar workers have an increased rate of lung cancer due to their high exposure to secondhand smoke. In an article published in 1993 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Siegel found that bar workers are exposed to levels of secondhand smoke that are 4 to 6 times higher than in typical offices and 4Ω times higher than in homes with a smoker. Due to this exposure, bar workers are up to twice as likely to die from lung cancer. Throughout the United States, 32 cities have already passed laws that eliminate smoking in all bars and clubs. Seven of these cities are in Massachusetts. On January 1, 1998, a law that eliminates smoking in all bars in the state of California will go into effect.
The data used by Biener and Siegel come from a random telephone survey of 2,356 Massachusetts adults interviewed over a ten-month period in 1995 as part of the Massachusetts Adult Tobacco Survey. The survey was conducted by the Center for Survey Research at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
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