Here’s an interesting article from today’s Courant:
For many, the state’s 2003 ban on smoking in restaurants and bars has pitted physical health against financial well-being, and has created a controversy over fundamental fairness that could rise to constitutional proportions. Five justices of the state Supreme Court Wednesday presided over spirited arguments on the validity of the ban.
Restaurants and bars owners are subject to the ban. Casinos and private clubs - such as golf and yacht clubs, veterans club halls and orders of the Moose - are not. People such as Adams, who put together a coalition of nearly 100 bar owners to underwrite a challenge to the law, are feeling the pinch in no small way.
Adams said his gross revenue has dropped by $10,000 to $15,000 a month, because his bar is a scant 5-mile drive from a casino. He is better off than one of the original plaintiffs in the case - Irving Nielsen, owner of the Sundowner Cafe in downtown New London - who has since gone out of business.
I’ve got to admit that I do like the ban. I hate being around cigarette smoke, and while the prior version of the law (requiring restraunts that had smoking areas to have that part of the facility on separate ventilation than the nonsmoking area) kept me happy, it’s been nice being able to occasionally go to trivia tournaments at regional bars without fearing that I would soon cough up a lung.
However, the plaintiffs do have a point. If the ban was passed in a way that places them at a competitive disadvantage against certain other institutions (even if some of those institutions are on Pequot or Mohegan land), then there is a certain unfairness here. Throw in my inner libertarian saying that the free market should decide if such places exist….