Houston bars go smoke-free 9/1/07

I have no problem whatsoever with Houston bars and restaurants going smoke-free. I understand that you'll still be able to smoke outside, say, on a patio terrace at a restaurant, for instance, and there are a few other exceptions.

The wife and I are soooo glad we quit smoking almost seven years ago. We quit 11/11/00, in the middle of the contested Gore/Bush presidential election of 2000. We figured, if we can quit during this insane bullshit, we can stay quit. And we have. The amount of money we have saved is probably well over $15,000 by now, not to mention the (missing) wear-and-tear on our lungs and clothes and furniture and cars, etc. If any of you readers out there are still smoking, go ahead and give it up. You can do it, and you'll be glad you did.

What I DO have a problem with is Houston's efforts to shut down all the titty bars in town. Houston gained a worldwide reputation for titty bars, and we've had some of the finest anywhere, anytime, with some of the most beautiful women. I know it's rather exploitative, but the vast majority of these women were/are doing it totally voluntarily. They're not forced into this business. Ok, some actually may be, and those need to be shut down and the perpetrators prosecuted. Sexual slavery is wrong, wrong, wrong. These women are trading on their fitness and beauty, and women have done that thru the ages (probably). Certainly, titty bars are more blatant than the subtle getting-your-way-using-your-feminine-wiles kind of thing, but Houston is cutting off one of its legs by doing this. I think they're going to be successful at closing them down. They already put into place a "3-foot rule" a few years ago whereby you cannot touch the women and they cannot touch you, which is patently absurd.

I think within a year or two, you won't find any titty bars in the city. You'll have to go outside the city into the county (where you'll still be able to smoke in a bar or club), and the likelihood of getting fleeced increases exponentially out there.

Oh yeah, the smoking story...

Ruling keeps Houston's smoking ban on track
By MATT STILES, Houston Chronicle

A federal judge on Monday rejected bar owners' complaints about Houston's comprehensive smoking ban, allowing the new restrictions to take effect Saturday.

After a daylong hearing in which the bar owners sought a preliminary injunction against the ordinance, U.S. District Judge Gray Miller found that the city can regulate alcohol-selling businesses to protect the public health and welfare.

Miller said the plaintiffs, Crazy Frogs Saloon and the Houston Association of Alcoholic Beverage Permit Holders, did not meet the legal burden required for an injunction.

He also rejected claims that the city's ordinance, which extends the current ban from restaurants to the indoors of most public places, including bars, improperly or unfairly regulated the businesses. He also dismissed claims the ordinance was unconstitutionally vague.

"The city of Houston's smoking ordinance, in my view, does not conflict with the state law that regulates the sale of alcohol," Miller said. "The mere fact that Texas has enacted laws that regulate the sale of alcohol does not preclude the city from passing ordinances regarding establishments that serve alcohol. Otherwise, the city could not impose regulations, such as a health code or noise ordinances."

Mayor Bill White, who quit smoking cigarettes and cigars years ago, praised the decision late Monday.

"We will be going into a new era of protection of public health when the smoke-free rules go into effect," he said.

White urged Houstonians to quit, noting the negative health effects and high costs of smoking, and he pledged to abandon his habit of occasionally chewing on cigars.

Inspectors get training

The city recently hired a second smoking enforcement officer, according to Jeff Conn, who had been the only smoking inspector. Conn also trained restaurant inspectors last week to be on the lookout for smoking violations during routine inspections, he said. Those inspectors are allowed to issue smoking citations to managers, who generally are responsible for enforcing smoking laws in their establishments, but not smokers themselves.

Kathy Patrick, a private attorney who agreed to handle the case pro bono, said the city succeeded because the ordinance was clearly worded and understandable, and because City Council acted to protect the health of all Houstonians.

"The law is very clear that, when you're talking ordinances enacted to protect the public health, the plaintiffs bear a very high burden to prevent those regulations from going into effect," she said.

Plaintiff's attorney Al Van Huff declined to comment after the verdict.

In an opening statement and in court filings, Van Huff argued that the city's ordinance pre-empted state laws limiting the regulation of on-premises liquor consumption to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

The new ordinance has exceptions for certain businesses, including convention facilities, hotels, private rooms in nursing homes and stores and bars that do significant tobacco sales.

By offering exemptions to some liquor-selling establishments and not others, the city's ordinance creates an unfair competitive climate for Houston's bars, Van Huff said.

"The city is interfering in a pretty delicate framework," Van Huff told Miller.

Patrick disputed that.

"The Alcoholic Beverage Code regulates the sale of alcohol, and this is a regulation of smoking," she said. "The two are very different, and there was no argument really that the city didn't have a right to regulate smoking."

Later, Van Huff called Mary Price, who owns Crazy Frogs Saloon, which operates in a small island of city-annexed land near Willowbrook Mall surrounded by Harris County.

'A difficult choice'

Price said she feared her customers and employees may abandon her bar for smoking establishments in the county, which does not restrict smoking in bars.

"If this ban had passed statewide, I'd be happy," she said. "I really believe that all the bars in Houston are going to suffer."

Both White and Patrick, whose son suffers from asthma, said they sympathized with bar owners concerned about their businesses. But they also argued that having smoke-free operations might draw in new customers, and they said the overall public health of employees and patrons warranted the ordinance.

"It was a difficult choice," Patrick said, "but that's why we have elected city councils to balance all of that and decide what's in the interests of everyone."

City Councilwoman Carol Alvarado, a ban supporter who held hours of hearings on the ordinance last year before its adoption, issued a statement praising the ruling.

"I want to thank Kathy Patrick and her team for doing a phenomenal job representing the City of Houston and for taking time out of their busy schedule to provide pro bono services on a lawsuit I believe was a waste of time and tax-paying dollars. Other cities have passed similar ordinances to protect their residents from the health hazards of secondhand smoke."

Chronicle reporter Alexis Grant contributed to this story.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5087241.html