Smokers have to take it outside

Starting as soon as they say "Happy New Year" tonight, revelers in bars and clubs that permitted cigarettes and cigars will have to step outside to welcome 2009 with a smoke.

The few night-life establishments that haven't already banned smoking have to impose it as of midnight Thursday, when the Utah Indoor Clean Air Act becomes fully implemented, pushing the last vestige of unabashed indoor smokers outside.

Utah, which has the lowest per capita tobacco use in the country — barely 10 percent of adults are smokers — is one of the last states to make all indoor public gathering places smoke-free. And as the list of health risks associated with tobacco use just keeps getting longer, public health administrators and state government officials say the ban was long overdue when it was approved.

Not necessarily, said a club owner who petitioned the state Department of Health to review and clarify the law's scope, specifically an apparent loophole regarding cigarettes. Bob Brown, owner of Cheers to You, a private club at 315 S. Main, says Utah can't ban cigarettes because they are excluded from the state's technical definition of a "tobacco product."

However, the statute by intent prohibits tobacco in any form.

Brown said he wants to continue to allow smoking at his club and would like an exception made for cigarettes. Otherwise, he states in the petition, he will lose money due to the ban and the penalties associated with it.

Smokers, and some nonsmokers, have argued that the ban is a perfect example of government going too far into people's personal lives. Bars were the last refuge of cigarette and cigar smokers who have gladly invited nonsmokers who can't tolerate smoke to just stay away.

The problem is smoking isn't just a choice for the smoker, it affects a lot of people around them, said David Neville, a spokesman for the state's decade-long anti-tobacco public awareness campaign — "Just as the Clean Air Act is intended to help improve the public's health, not limit the choices people make."

Concern for the air quality inside a club is fine, and employees probably shouldn't have to spend hours breathing tainted air, said a clerk who refused to be identified at a downtown magazine store. He said saying anything in print or even out loud that isn't lock step with the anti-tobacco campaigns "can make you a target for abuse in a big hurry."

The clerk, who said he is a smoker from way back, said all the scary facts used against smoking "amounts to voodoo." In the process, he said, smokers become second-class citizens or kids see them as "bad" people.