A local group is looking to change the minds of those in Lubbock about the continued allowance of smoking in public workplaces, such as bars and sports grills. If passed, the new sanctions could impact Texas Tech University and its students.
The City of Lubbock currently prohibits smoking inside of and within 20 feet of enclosed public places — with the exception of defined “designated areas,” which include bars or cocktail lounges as well as sports grills –as defined by the city zoning ordinance.
Matthew Harris, the West Texas Smoke Free Coalition chairman and local lawyer, said the coalition has expanded to around 70 people since it was founded last July, and its members are concerned about how secondhand smoke in these locations affects the community.
Kelsey Bernstein, the local policy manager for the American Heart Association, said the AHA got involved with the group because a potential state law is before the Texas Legislature. The AHA decided it would be a good idea to educate communities and work on getting ordinances passed in local communities, she said.
The Tech Student Government Association Chief of Staff Peter Brady said the West Texas Smoke Free Coalition meets to discuss concerns such as indoor smoking effects on workers and works to educate the public and the Lubbock City Council.
Peter Brady
The meetings he has been attending have been for planning, he said, but the next couple of months will encompass public education. He said the biggest concern is regarding the health of workers and others exposed to secondhand smoke.
“The central issue isn’t about regulation,” he said. “It’s about people’s health.”
Brady said the coalition is currently drafting an ordinance extension and hopes to have it on the City Council agenda sometime this summer, and he thinks some of the City Council candidates will have to address this issue over the next month leading up to the elections.
“Their stance on this issue could affect how people vote for them,” Brady said.
Chairman Harris said the group does not have anything set in stone right now, and the council has not said it will be putting the issue on the agenda for June. He said the coalition does not have an ordinance drafted, and its primary focus right now is on public education.
If the issue were placed on the June agenda and if he is reelected, District 1 Councilman Victor Hernandez said he would make a decision after hearing and weighing both sides of the argument.
“I really have not heard too much or really anything on that issue,” Hernandez said, “so with that having been said, I’m pretty open.”
District 1 City Council candidate Lana Bear Moore said she would not support an ordinance banning smoking in bars.
“I guess would have to say that I would not support an ordinance banning smoking because that’s what, you know, bars are for,” Moore said. “As a smoker — as a citizen, I cannot infringe upon the rights of those who choose to do so any more than I can infringe on the rights of those who choose not to do so.”
District 3 City Council candidate Maurice Stanley said he would not support the proposed ordinance extension if elected.
“The reason being I think that, that is a decision for the local business or the owner to make; I think government needs to stay out of that,” Stanley said. “See, we went through this a few years ago when the city banned smoking in our business [Jerry’s Barbershop], our business here, and it gets down to this: if we allowed smoking, probably that’s all we would have is smokers coming to the shop. It gets to be – economics plays a part in that matter, and so I think that’s just better left to the business owner to make that decision of what he wants to do.”
District 3 City Council candidate Deanne Clark also said she thinks smoking bans are best left up to the individual business owners. She said it will work itself out because she has heard some owners end up banning it because the public quit going to those locations.
“You leave it to the owner of course because that’s what we believe in, but public pressure finally, usually wins out,” Clark said. “Really and truly under the free enterprise system, I am not in favor of that ordinance, but I do think it’s going to happen because first of all, (smoking’s) unhealthy, and people are getting to where they don’t like it, and they just want select places to go. So I really think that’s one of those things that’s going to solve itself and we don’t need any more rules and regulations – if we can help it.”
A July 2006 Lubbock Avalanche-Journal article reported the last Lubbock smoking ban financially benefited local business — which was in contrast with some local fears concerning the ordinance that went into effect in 2004.
A 2013 study released by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that statewide smoke-free laws would not have an adverse economic effect on restaurants or bars in states such as Texas. The researchers found that smoke-free laws had no adverse economic impact in the nine states studied.
District 1 candidates Frank Gutierrez and District 3 candidate Jeff Griffith did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mayor Pro Tem and District 5 Councilwoman Karen Gibson said she would not support furthering the ordinance because she does not think it is the government’s job to tell the owners if their business should allow smoking or not. She said a majority of the businesses would have to publicly agree, and predicted blame falling on the city council if the ban angered some business owners.
“So here’s what’s going to happen: We’ll pass a ban on whatever and then they’re going to have to go to non-smoking,” Gibson said. “They’re going to have customers saying, ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?’ ‘Well the city council passed this ban – we don’t have a choice.’ They’re going to come scream in a microphone in my face saying ‘Why did you do this?’ And, they’re going to say ‘well we had to because the local government is telling us what we have to do.'”
District 5 candidate and Lubbock Board of Health Chairman Dr. Brian Carr said he heard a presentation from the AHA to the board of health in March.
“Their presentation was that they simply, this was a state-wide initiative where they were wanting to remove the loopholes in the ordinance where, for example, all a place has to do to become a sports bar is put up TVs and boom you’re a sports bar,” Carr said, “and the rational for this is the scientific evidence of the dangers of secondhand smoke, and it wasn’t so much about the patrons as it was the employees of these bars where there were exposure issues and health problems related to it.”
He said the presentation’s primary goal is to remove the exemption for sports bars.
“And, you know the opinion of the board — we didn’t take a formal vote — but I think from the discussion that there was a general support for that as it was pretty narrowly defined, and it did certainly seem helpful for the employees of such establishments.”
According to the AHA website, cigarette smoking causes more than 440,000 annual deaths, and secondhand smoke accounts for about 22,700 to 69,600 premature deaths from heart and blood vessel disease.
January marked the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. surgeon general report on smoking, which required cigarette warning labels and banned cigarette television advertisements. In the 50 Years of Progress report, Acting Surgeon General Boris Lushniak said smoking is still the No. 1 preventable cause of U.S. premature disease and death.
Adult smoking rates have fallen from about 43 percent in 1965 to about 18 percent today, Assistant Secretary for Health Howard Koh said in the report.
The Texas Department of State Health Services website said 55 percent of Texas is covered by public smoke-free ordinances.
According to the University of Houston’s Texas smoke-free ordinance database, Lubbock has a three out of five smoke-free or moderate restrictiveness level rating.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute recently released The County Health Rankings, which compares health ratings of counties within states, which showed that Lubbock County placed 153rd out of 232 counties in Texas for health outcomes and 72nd for health factors. The website said 20 percent of adults in Lubbock County are current smokers, compared to the state average of 17 percent.
Baselice & Associates, Inc. randomly surveyed registered Texas voters and found that 74 percent of Texas voters favor a proposed statewide law prohibiting smoking in all indoor workplaces and public facilities. This percentage has continually increased since 2007.
After Michael Clintsman, owner of Bar PM and Local Bar and Grill, expressed his hope to ban smoking at bars to KCBD in October, Coalition Chairman Matthew Harris said polls show around 71 percent of Lubbock citizens are in favor of enhancing the smoke-free ban — which he sees as a positive indicator of where Lubbock citizens currently stand.
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