Smoking Laws Transcripts June 29, 1997 10 a.m. - 11 a.m. GUESTS: MARTIN WASSERMAN, MD, SECRETARY, MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH BRUCE POTTER, MASSACHUSETTS RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION The following are excerpts from the viewer call-in portion of the program. MS. GRASSO: I'm June Grasso, and if you're a smoker who's tired of being treated like a criminal or if you're a non-smoker who wants to breathe cleaner air, this is definitely the hour for you. We're going to spend it talking about the laws of smoking, from the work place to restaurants to your home, and maybe -- this is a big maybe -- we'll come to an agreement about what the law should be on this controversial subject. Joining me now to fire up our discussion on smoking laws is Martin Wasserman, a doctor and a lawyer. Martin is the secretary of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for the state of Maryland, which makes him the top health official in the state. Thanks so much for being here. MR. WASSERMAN: Good morning, June. How are you? STATE SMOKING LAWS MS. GRASSO: Let's talk, first of all, about Maryland's health laws and smoking/non-smoking laws. How tough are they? MR. WASSERMAN: Well, we think they're some of the toughest in the country. When Governor Parris Glendening came into office, he was faced initially with a worker protection potential ban. It had been in the court system, it had been tied up by the tobacco industry, but shortly after we took office, it was let out of the courts, and it then went into the legislature, where the governor fought very fiercely to protect all of the work force. The only places where you can smoke legally in Maryland within an enclosed work site is in a bar or in a restaurant that has a bar area, just a very small area around that bar. So we're very pleased. We protect about 96 percent of our work force. MS. GRASSO: There's no national law on smoking, but many cities, including New York and Los Angeles, now have laws that severely limit where and when you can light up. Here's the law in New York City. Smoking is prohibited in all restaurants that seat more than 35 people, but you can light up at the bar area if one exists, and remember the law doesn't apply to smaller eateries. Next, if a restaurant has an outdoor seating area, only 25 percent of the space can be used for smoking. Smoking is also banned in all schools, stadiums, bowling alleys, and billiard halls, but it's legal in bingo parlors. And, finally, if a company does permit smoking in the work place, no more than three people can smoke at once in the same office or room. And before we go to the phones, let me bring another voice into this discussion. Bruce Potter is on the phone. He's the director of membership services for the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. Good morning, Bruce. MR. POTTER: Good morning. MS. GRASSO: Okay, I want to ask you both a question about smoking laws, such as the one that we have in New York. Why are these laws so seemingly complex? For example, in Los Angeles, you have a ban on smoking in restaurants. Why are -- why aren't there just simple laws like that -- you can't smoke in restaurants or you can -- or you can smoke in certain areas of restaurants. Why the number -- in other words, below a certain number you can do this, above a certain number, you can do this, outdoors you can do that. Bruce, do special interest groups like yours try to get those exceptions? MR. POTTER: Not necessarily those exceptions. What we try to do is just create a level playing field, because all the restaurants are really comfortable competing with the other restaurants in their area, as long as everything is equal. But if you take one particular town, like in Massachusetts where we are and what's happening up here, you have one town that's passing one law and the town right beside it is not, then we have cross-border sales creating economic hardships for some of the restaurants, and that's the problem that we have up here. MS. GRASSO: Bruce, you know, I haven't smoked in more than eight years, but even when I did smoke, I didn't like to go to a restaurant where people were smoking. I didn't like it when I was eating. Why -- does it really affect your revenues to have a non-smoking restaurant? MR. POTTER: Yes, it does. We can't tell you which particular restaurant in which particular town will be affected the most, and I think that's why you see New York having 35 seats plus and the state of Massachusetts at one time had 75 seats plus in their law. And what happens there is the much smaller restaurants cannot designate an area and have it separated for smokers and non-smokers, and I think that's why you see that low-end separation most of the time. MS. GRASSO: Well, I want to ask Marty, when you were trying to pass the laws in Maryland, were the restaurant groups and special interest groups trying to carve out these exceptions -- for example, for smaller restaurants and smaller employers, things like that? MR. WASSERMAN: Well, there is always a lobby that is out there, and we often think it's been influenced by the Tobacco Institute and tobacco monies raising the specter of the fact that revenues will go down. But, in fact, study after study, if done scientifically, has demonstrated that there hasn't been a loss of revenues. In fact, what happens is the vast majority of the public are non-smokers. Their family oriented, and they go out and they will frequent restaurants more, because they don't have this disturbing effect of tobacco smoke. SECOND-HAND SMOKE MS. GRASSO: Welcome back to Legal Cafe. It's time for an e-mail question on smoking. I want to remind you, too, that our website is open all the time, and it's a terrific place to ask questions and download information on smoking or any of the other topics we discuss here on the show. This morning's question comes from Lee in Montana who asks, "What can I do about a neighbor who smokes outside and the smoke blows into my back yard and home?" I guess Lee's not the Marlboro Man out there in Montana, but, Marty Wasserman, what can you do? This isn't the same thing I was saying, when you come out of buildings in New York City, you have smoke hitting you from every direction from people who are confined from smoking in their office. MR. WASSERMAN: You know, that's where the laws don't -- and I -- if you're going to be a good neighbor, they ought to communicate and they ought to say, you know, "This is really disturbing me," and see if he can't get some kind of interpersonal address. I don't think the laws right now, at least, should be dealing with neighbor-to-neighbor over-the-back-yard-fence, particularly when you have so much outdoors as in Montana. We have very specific, targeted objectives, and that would not be one of them, Lee. I would advise you to talk to your neighbor and see if you can't work it out civilly. MS. GRASSO: And watch tomorrow morning, Lee, because the second half of our show tomorrow is going to be about annoying neighbors, so we may have some advice for you there. SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES Our next caller is Joyce from Ohio. Good morning, Joyce. Q Good morning, June. I enjoy your show. MS. GRASSO: Oh, thanks so much. Are the laws tough in Ohio on smokers? Q Well, in my area, there's a lot of places that they tell you you can't smoke, and it gets me mad, you know -- stadiums, even our high school, we can't even go to a game, a football game. MS. GRASSO: How long have you been smoking, Joyce? Q Oh, quite a few years. And I can understand people wanting, you know, their area, you know, the non-smokers, but I get -- there's places that I used to go to have coffee -- in the big department stores, they have the cafe. They don't even have the business there no more since they put this non-smoking. MS. GRASSO: Really, so you've seen a difference in the business? Q Oh, big time, and it's been several years now. MS. GRASSO: Well, let's go to Bruce Potter, who is the director of membership services for a restaurant association in Massachusetts. Bruce, do you have real proof that in certain areas people just don't go -- for example, if they just put a blanket no-smoking policy in all the restaurants in a state, do you really think more people would stay home? MR. POTTER: No, I think actually that might be one of the better situations. You know, the major situation is having a problems with bars, and I think Maryland reacted to that, Vermont has reacted to that, California, New York, and some of the restaurants need to have certain sections with smokers. They need to accommodate all their customers, because what happens is for some reason one day all of a sudden a law is passed and each restaurant has to be able to accommodate different customers, and as the gentleman from Maryland mentioned before, you know, there's a large majority of people that are non-smokers now, as compared to smokers. I think it's 80-20 in Massachusetts right now. However, if the case was that non-smoking would be so good for restaurants, some of our locations that have banned smoking totally up here would have lines out the doors of the restaurants all the time, and that just isn't the case. And in the town of Brookline, which a lot of people know about, the initial reaction from some of the restaurant people between 1993 and 1994, I mean, we have some restaurants report $43,000 down in sales, 25,000 plus (dollars), 12,000 (dollars), 9,000 (dollars), 15,000 (dollars) -- MS. GRASSO: So Brookline has no smoking in restaurants? MR. POTTER: It did for about a year and a half, and then the town meeting reversed that and allowed it to have a separately ventilated room for bars and lounges, so some people have utilized that variance procedure now. MS. GRASSO: Marty, do you find that, you know, in most, as in New York City, larger restaurants, the bar area you can smoke in, does that stop the secondhand smoke enough from going into the room so that it's a good accommodation? MR. WASSERMAN: It's a fairly good accommodation. You can actually have the apparatus so that you can ventilate directly outside, and then you can contain all of that smoke within an enclosed area. Most of the good statutes, the good laws, require floor-to-ceiling partitions so that you really have a fairly decent shield from the environmental tobacco smoke. MS. GRASSO: Now, Joyce talks about places like stadiums. Now, open-air stadiums -- why can't you smoke in certain sections of open-air stadiums? MR. WASSERMAN: Well, I think here, June, people are making -- they're making a statement. They're saying that in Massachusetts, it's 80 percent and the rest of the country it's 75 percent of the -- that's the adult public, so we take our kids to ball games, we're here -- and I was very pleased that Mr. Angelus, who owns the Baltimore Orioles, when we put in Camden Park -- the Oriole Park at Camden Yards, they made that a no-smoking stadium, and I think they started that movement. There was a real intent here to recognize what the public actually wants, and it also is a factor in discouraging people who want to stop smoking, those 80 percent, 70 percent of smokers who want to stop. We're putting -- in fact, I met a legislator recently -- I used to be health officer in some of the larger jurisdictions in Maryland, and one of our key department heads told me that he stopped smoking as the public made it increasingly more difficult for him to smoke. He just said, "The heck with it. I'm just going to stop," and he'd been two packs a day. MS. GRASSO: Joyce, let me ask you this: Do you just get frustrated by the fact that you this your cigarette and you can't have it in certain places, or are you more frustrated by the fact that someone's telling you you can't do it? Q Well, in ways, both, but our rights -- I can understand they want the right to not, you know, for a non-smoking area. I was sitting in a restaurant, and they eventually quit the non-smoking, but there was a lady, and I said, will you -- you know, it was a non-smoker, but she was sitting over in our section when it was a smoking. I said, "You guys are the reason that we don't -- or, you know, our rights are taken away." My husband don't smoke, but he gets aggravated because it's all -- it's just like the government's taking all the rights away you know, different things, and then as far a smoking in stadiums, I live close to the Bengals' and the Reds', you know, stadiums, but drinking -- and I watch sports on TV, and all you see is advertising on different kinds of beer, you know, the alcohol. The wrecks -- the guys that drink, the people that drink at those stadiums and then leave, there's more wrecks caused and they kill several at one time. MS. GRASSO: Alcohol and drunk driving, of course, and, you know, the problem is, Joyce, you're in the minority, as we discussed, and really the trend is going toward non-smoking, but you're right that you do have a right to smoke, and legally no one can stop you from doing that. But we're going to take more of your calls and get your input on this. STOP SMOKING PROGRAMS AND HEALTH INSURANCE MS. GRASSO: Welcome back to Legal Cafe and our look at the laws of smoking. We have a lot of callers on the line who want weigh in on this issue. Dorothy from Virginia -- thanks for holding so long, Dorothy. You're on Legal Cafe. Q I'm a smoker. And I have some of the same issues that Eric had from Kansas and Joyce had from Ohio. However, my question is mostly directed to Mr. Wasserman, because I live in the Northern Virginia area, I work in the District of Columbia, I have family and friends who live in Maryland, so I'm dealing with the legal situations from three very close jurisdictions. However, my question is more toward smoking cessation. I'd like to know, since there are so many addictions afoot in the land and there are programs to help addicts, heroine addicts, there's methadone programs, there's clean needles exchange programs, for alcoholics, there's an Antabuse program. I'd like to know if there's any kind of movement afoot to help smokers who want to quit quit without having to bear all of the costs for the patches or smoking cessation classes. MS. GRASSO: That's a great question, Dorothy. That's a great thing for a city or state to do, wouldn't it be? MR. WASSERMAN: Well, they can do that, plus -- but now that we're into managed care, and in Maryland, we're about 40 percent penetration of managed care, one of the heaviest in the country, it is now beneficial to a health insurance company to pay for the patches themselves, because if you're a long-term customer of mine, and I get you off cigarettes, look at the money I'm going to save on health care costs. MS. GRASSO: But, Marty, do they? I mean, she's asking are there actually programs out there -- MR. WASSERMAN: Sure. MS. GRASSO: -- without having to pay? How does she find out in her area? And she just mentioned the area she's in. MR. WASSERMAN: She can ask her own insurance company whether they're providing it In Maryland, they talked about requiring all insurers. That did not pass recently, but the state -- we spend money, and we spend both state and federal dollars, and we distribute those dollars to our local health departments, and there are many smoking cessation programs that are funded and sponsored by local health departments or by some of the non-profit agencies. MS. GRASSO: Do you think -- now, she's in Virginia. Do you think that a Virginia chapter of the American Lung Association or a group like that might be able to help her, direct her? MR. WASSERMAN: I used to be the health officer, Dorothy, in Arlington County. Back several years ago, the Lung Association did provide smoking cessation classes. I'm not sure whether they still do, but if you called your local health department in Northern Virginia, I'm sure that they could discuss this issue with you and probably give you some advice. But I would also tell you that the cost of purchasing smoking cessation items is far less expensive and far less costly than continuing -- MS. GRASSO: How -- do they work? I mean, I think both you and I -- I know lots of people who've tried, they'll sit you down, a smoker and say, "I've tried the patch, I've tried hypnotism, I've tried all these different things" -- do they work? Do these programs work? MR. WASSERMAN: They can. They should, if you use them appropriately. The number of people -- you have to try multiple times to quit. This is -- nicotine is one of the most strongly addicting drugs that we have, and it's -- just now, you know, I'm delighted, and I hope that the Congress will continue to protect the FDA's regulatory oversight over nicotine, because it is such a harmfully addictive drug. MS. GRASSO: So you suggest to people, even if you've tried the patch or something -- MR. WASSERMAN: Oh, continue. Continue. MS. GRASSO: -- try another thing or try that again? MR. WASSERMAN: Try that again, try something else. There's now a new drug, I think it's Zytec or, again, I'm not sure. It's just been released as a -- to be used along with some of the smoking cessation nicotine-delivery devices. MS. GRASSO: Dr. Marty Wasserman, thanks so much for coming in this morning. I know you have a busy day, you have to testify before Congress this afternoon, so we really appreciate your being here. And, Bruce Potter, thanks so much for being on the phone with us and for giving us the other side of the viewpoint. Thanks so much. MS. GRASSO: That's all on Legal Cafe tomorrow morning. Thanks for stopping by.