Since this is a demo-cracy (seems we are still working on it), put it to a vote. But I can’t see why you want to ban medical cannabis, yet let folks blow a drug more addictive than heroin in kids’ faces in public places. These ciggie folks think crackheads are worse than they are, but many street drugs are easier to kick, and less dangerous, than nicotine. It’s time for nicotine smokers to admit they have problems and deal with them instead of complaining when sane folks do not want their second hand smoke. It’s as bad as throwing your used condom on somebody’s head. It may be harmless to them..it may not! One bar owner they interviewed in St Charles said she had more customers since she banned ciggies.

This is a tough one! If they leave it status quo, do they open the doors to future litigation? If they prohibit inside smoking, many (if not more!)smokers will drive east and patronize the St. Louis County and City establishments, much like what happened recently in Illinois (except that they drove West).

My recommendation is that each business owner should determine if he wants to permit smoking within his establishment. If so, he would post a sign so stating, advising patrons that they enter at their own risk. Other-minded business owners can prohibit smoking, and it’s entirely possible that their business will also thrive, attracting patrons who don’t wish to smell like a dirty ashtray.

Enough is enough, Why not let the business owners and the customers make their own call. Don’t we have enough for our own good laws?
Where are they getting their statistics that businesses have not suffered, bars are closing down right and left in Illinois.
You have the right to go where you want, you don’t like smoking joints, don’t go in!
I own a bar and restaurant and we have a seperate enterance and dining areas for non smokers but guess what, the smokers pay the bills!

Why cant you have smoking and non smoking establishments?

Just put up a sign and say we allow or we dont allow smoking here. That gives everyone the choice to go there or to go someplace else.

Then you wont have to worry about your kids, your allergies, whatever. But at the same time smokers can have a place of their own still.

There has to be a way to make everyone happy.
I think this would work.

Whether a business allows smoking is for them and their customers to decide. Residents of St. Charles didn’t elect the council to be our mommies.

I agree with government not babysitting. A business should put a sign on the door that says “Smoking allowed” or “Smoking Banned” and customers can make up their own mind as to whether or not they wish to patronize the business. I don’t believe the government should be forcing business owners to cater to a certain demographic. While most resteraunts will probably find that their business remains somewhat stable, many bars will not. I’m sick of hearing people say “I have the right to breathe clean air”. You also have the right to not enter the building. But at the very least, this is a subject that should be put to the vote of the people that live in the area, not by a bunch of council members who will probably demand some kickbacks from a few bars in the area to swing the vote their way.

As long as were banning everything that is offensive…. isn’t drinking bad for non-drinkers? Drinking in public is certainly bad for the public. People go to bars, get drunk, drive home, and kill other people. Why don’t the babysitting dummy council members ban drinking at bars, restaraunts, and other public places? Probably because their city gets a ton of money in revenue from liquor licenses and other various fees associated with opening a bar or restaraunt. If the City Council got tax money from cigarettes sold in bar vending machines, this would never even cross their minds.

Our elected officials at every level are doing nothing more than restricting our freedoms and taking our money. We should call this the United States of China.

Let the free market decide. There is no good health argument for allowing alcohol consumption while bannning smoking. I believe we face a greater helth risk from drunk driving than from second hand smoke. Plus, we can at least choose to go to a restaurant that allows smoking. We can’t avoid the drunk driver.

Holy Moly that would be a great idea.If you can’t eat peanuts at the ballgame why not ban smoking?To breath in that horrible smell of cigarettes is the worst thing a human can do for it’s health.UGH!!!Get rid of smoking in St.Charles,Mo one of the greatest places to live in Missouri.

momama, please let us know what restaurants and bars you will be purching in St. Charles when it implements the smoking ban (it’ll eventually happen someday). Because there will be many owners putting them up for sale due to declining business. When there is no more smoking allowed in St. Charles, please momama, save these owners from frustration and undertake the worthy cause of owning healthy smoke-free restaurants and bars. I’m sure you will do very well.

RCJ, interestingly enough, there are health benefits to moderate alcohol consumption including reduced risk of heart disease, gallstones, and even diabetes. The risks to alcohol you refer to are real risks, but aren’t solved by banning the consumption of alcohol on a premises since people who are motivated will only drive further to find alcohol, increasing their time on the road and the chance of an accident.

As far as the smoking ban is concerned, I agree with many of the comments here that the free market should decide. Let restaurant and bar owners decide for themselves if it makes business sense to ban smoking.

A new study predicts that a St. Charles smoking ban would cause a 13 percent increase in St. Charles drunk driving fatalities. People who never set foot in bars will be put at new and deadly risk. That seems unacceptable.

http://www.econ.iastate.edu/calendar/papers/CottiPaperDrunkDriving.pdf

let capitalism decide, will say Joe’s smoking bar do poorly, and sam non smoking makes millions

Let the free market decide…… What about people that do not smoke? Where are our rights not to breath in this horrible crap. Smoking is disgusting, not to mention a danger to your health.

I hate to tell people that they shouldn’t do something, even if it may be slowly killing them. But, it sure is great to come home after an evening out and not smell like an ashtray!

Federal Reserve economist Dr. Michael Pakko recently found that the smoking ban in Columbia, Missouri caused the Columbia bar business to
shrink 11 percent. Columbia restaurants that serve alcohol lost 6.5
percent of their business and the overall Columbia restaurant trade shrank
3.5 percent due to the ban. St. Charles bars and restaurants could expect the same dismal results.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/econ/pakko/mpbans.html

There is a very important point missed by most of the posts here. This ban is recommended by the commission on HEALTH ISSUES. This is an important public health issue that really has nothing to do with free-markets or business revenue. This needs to be done for one simple reason: the people of St. Charles & all those who visit will be healthier for it. The economic studies by Dr. Pakko (while irrelevant with regards to health effects), need to be taken with a HUGE grain of salt. He is a notable Libertarian activist, and these “studies” are not official documents of the Fed. They are poorly designed and poorly written. Here is a little information about this man:

http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/pakko.pdf

mombo, a public health measure that will not reduce the overall exposure of nonsmokers to secondhand smoke, will increase the overall exposure of small children to secondhand smoke, and will increase by 13 percent the number of drunk driving fatalities, is not a smart way to make St. Charles healtier.

And you are wrong about Michael Pakko. He is a professional economist who has been a big help correcting the mistakes of public health experts such as Stanton Glantz who have tried to study the economic effects of smoking ban. According to this Columbia Tribune article, Michael Pakko enjoys the full support and admiration of his boss at the Federal Reserve:

“Howard Wall, director of regional economics for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said economic analysis provides an objective view of a controversial topic. Wall said proper examination of the data would lead to similar findings whether conducted by him, a nonsmoker who supports smoking bans, or Pakko, a smoker opposed to them.

‘Mike’s big contribution to this is to do it well,’ Wall said. ‘If I was doing the empirical work, I hope it would come out the exact same way his did.’

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Mar/20080329News002.asp

Anyone who believes there are good reasons for government mandated smoking bans or who believes they won’t hurt business should read the “Generic Stiletto” at

http://www.smokersclubinc.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4472

Smoking bans are based on lies. The Stiletto examines some of those lies in a clear and simple format. Feel free to download and print out the .pdf version and give copies to your local bar, restaurant, and club owners so that they’ll join the fight before it’s too late.

Supporters of free choice may not have the money for fancy TV ads, full time professional lobbyists, and multi-million dollar strategy conferences… but we DO have the truth on our side, and we do have dedicated and intelligent people who are angry about how our freedoms are being abused.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
Mid-Atlantic Regional Director of the SmokersClub.com, Citizens Freedom Alliance

it’s not just Pacco, every study published in a peer reviewed ECONOMICS journal has found bans hurt business…or employment. The Nevada Dept of Labor reported unemployment claims jumped up 58% following their restaruant ban. The IL gambing commission says gambling is down 17% in IL, the MO gaming commission says our gambling is up 4%.

So, when workers lose jobs and health insurance, (The Alton Belle has already laid off 70 workers) that is a bigger risk that the antsmoking groups say the smoke is. There are clear relatioships between imcome level and life expectancy up to incomes of $80,000 a year.

But the national leadership fo the antismokign groups do not tell the local meembers about many studies which find bans hurt business, so those local activists think all are supported by tobacco companies. This is simply not true visit http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/economic.html. Arnold changed their ban to a wall-off ordinance because their ban hurt business so badly.

Now it turns out every study which claims bans do not hurt business was funded by an antismoking group. So..who’s cheating here….

This is typical of the proban lobby - attack the credibility of anyone who produces results that do not support their position.

All of this stems from The American Cancer Society. The ACS is a front company for the Pharmacuetical Industry and mainly Johnson and Johnson. They push bans because it pushes sales of nicotine replacement products. They do no medical research and less than ten cents on the dollar goes to help cancer victims. Even then, they give rides to and from treatment and thats about it. Out of the largest 100 charities, they rated #93 on spending on their mission.

Is this an health issue - I think not. The three largest studies to date have shown no correlation. These studies were independent of the pharmacuetical and tobacco industry. You may not like smoke, but it won’t hurt you. Want proof - then why are the baby boomers living longer than any generation before them. More than half of them smoked and those that didn’t would have been in the presence of second hand smoke at home, work and play.

Does it effect economics - I can’t see how it doesn’t. I’ve never met one person that wouldn’t go out because they hated smoke that much. They may avoid certain establishments, but they still go out. On the other hand, if you can’t smoke in public, smokers will still go out, but not as much and not as long. I’ve also read the economic studies that claim that it doesn’t. In every case, there were serious issues that they hid.

Twin Cites study - they left out the winter months when a ban would have really affected numbers.

New York City Ban - they used 2001 numbers and of course the city went into a stand still after 9/11. Easy to make 2002 look better than 2001 after such a tragic event.

In other studies - they only used food sales and kicked out beverage sales.

They haven’t been truthful on the economic side.

Is the market working - absolutely, but I would guess it hasn’t been fully realized yet. Everyday there are more bars and restaurants that are smoke free. The restaurants that have gone smoke free have done well. Others will follow giving more choices to those that desire that enviroment. Right now, everybody has a choice whether your a smoker or not.

Actually they just did another study,thinking people would go to the East side to smoke……….not true well first of you you’d be crazy to go all the way over there..but no smoking in restaurants and bars actually brought a higher class of people and the places businesses went much higher

For more on the Kansas City lawsuit Councilman Bob Kneemiller referred to:
http://keepstlouisfree.blogspot.com/2008/05/kansas-city-lawsuit-may-strike-down.html

Why does Pat Lindsey continue to push smoking bans even though by now she must know that smoking bans cause more drunk driving deaths?

Hannegan- The Adams & Cotti study about smoking bans increasing drunk driving fatalities just doesn’t pass the “sniff test”. The fact is that drunk driving fatalities have decreased significantly over the past 20 years. The assumption in the study that you cite is that people must be driving out of communities with smoking bans so that they can smoke while they drink. This, obviously has them driving to communities WITHOUT smoking bans, where the alcohol related traffic fatalities have diminished. This studies results simply make no sense!

As we know, “there are three kind of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”.

The study suggests several possible explanations. Whatever the explanation one accepts, St. Charles can count on more drunk driving deaths if a smoking ban goes in. Isn’t that unacceptable?

First of all, I just don’t believe the statistics about drunk driving fatalities and smoking bans. As I said, it doesn’t make sense. If fatalities overall are going down, where are these lonely smokers driving?

Second, even if it were true, this would result in far fewer deaths than environmental tobacco smoke causes. There are about 16,000 alcohol related traffic fatalities in the US every year. A national 13% increase would be an additional 2080 deaths. Yes, this would be a tragedy, but environmental tobacco smoke exposure causes 35,000 ischemic heart disease deaths (heart attacks) every year. In the cold-hearted world of statistical analysis, this is a “no-brainer”.

mombo, I don’t believe secondhand smoke causes heart disease. The dose is just too low. But even if it did, bar and restaurant smoking bans don’t decrease the overall smoke exposure of nonsmokers. So why would a smoking ban lower the heart attack rate?

Please read the summary of this very large study that Big Tobacco had nothing to do with:

http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications.php?publication_id=3523

Banning smoking in public establishments is another way of making revenue for the City of Saint Charles. Just who and how will this non-smoking ban be monitored? What are they going to do hire a police officer to monitor these public establishments and the moment you light up you’re handed a ticket for $25.00, or will they install cameras to monitor the public?
This is nothing more than another way to violate our civil rights while having a surefire way of generating revenue for the city. What’s next?
Will I get a ticket for smoking while driving in my car or standing in my own front yard?

Scooter, a smoking ban is a lousy way for St. Charles to try to make money. Columbia police handed out 45 tickets for smoking in the first 13 months of the Columbia ban. But Columbia lost many businesses during that time due to the ban and Dr. Pakko estimates that Columbia lost 60,000 dollars in tax revenue during the first six months of the ban.

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2007/12/12/columbia-dining-tax-revenues-dissipate-smoking-ban/

I don’t think St Charles would do this to make money. Money however is part of the issue. Some very well paid people are pushing this issue on the council. The money filters down from big pharma for their own economic interest. Yet they would make you believe that it is a citizens grass roots effort. They claim a vast majority of people want this. They even claim that smokers want this. They claim to speak for you and me. I know of no smokers that want this. Most of the non-smokers that I know don’t care or are against it. I know of only a couple non-smokers who are for it.
The ACS has hired two full time people in St Louis to get a ban. That is not a grass roots organization. That is special interest willing to kill choice for money.