Beijing Bans Public Smoking
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:29 PM

The ban applies to public buildings, but not to bars and restaurants -- those establishments must have no-smoking sections, however. There are apparently 100,000 current government employees who will be enlisted as enforcers, according to this BBC report, which also provides an interesting factoid: "For every three cigarettes lit worldwide, one is smoked in China." (I just lighted three cigarettes -- how does China know to have someone take a smoke?)

Vice Squad, indolent of late, is taking to the road for a couple of months. For the next week or so, blogging will be minimal, I fear. Perhaps I will light three more cigarettes to deal with my apprehension.

Labels: China, smoking ban, tobacco

 
Anti-Gambling Legislation Successful!
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:07 PM

Um, well, except the legislation is not passed as an explicit anti-gambling measure. Nevertheless, public smoking bans are reliable in decreasing gambling (as long as those bans apply to on-site gambling venues). [Smoking bans put quite a crimp into bingo, too.] The most recent evidence comes from Down Unda (a curiously north-centric term), in New South Wales: "The ban on indoor smoking is ripping tens of millions from the pub and club industry, and poker machine turnover fell almost 20 per cent in hotels last month."

Of course, declines in gambling are always over-determined. Sure, there's the smoking ban, but there are also high petrol prices, wetter-than-usual-weather (which reinforces the smoking ban in that fewer bettors are desirous of stepping outside for a cigarette), internet-based competition, and (according to the linked article), high interest rates. This is the first time I have run across the claim that high interest rates deter gambling, but there does seem to be a certain logic to it.

Labels: Australia, gambling, poker, smoking ban

 
Bingo and Smoking; Bingo or Alcohol
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:11 PM

Vice Squad has been trumpeting the smoking-ban induced decline in bingo for so long now that it is amazing there is any bingo left. But there is, and today the New York Times catches up to bingo/smoking ban complemetarity: "[Managers of charity bingo parlours] say smoking goes with bingo like peanut butter with jelly."

For the vice policy aficionado, however, this week's premier bingo-related story derives from Carlisle in the UK. Remember those ASBOs of questionable constitutionality (British constitutionality, that is)? One 23-year old gentleman had a history of being a troublesome drunk, so he was given an ASBO prohibiting him both from drinking and from patronising drinking establishments in Carlisle city centre. (Incidentally, the idea that a troublesome drunk can have his drinking privileges revoked is consistent both with Vice Squad's robustness principle and with John Stuart Mill's interpretation of his harm principle.) But this particular yob, er, gentleman, also enjoys a bingo hall in Carlisle. Alas, the bingo parlour is a drinking establishment (no longer a smoking establishment in England!), so the terms of his ASBO would keep him from bingo-ing. This will not stand, cried the Cumbrian magistrates, and voila, an exception was granted: he can go to the bingo hall, but he cannot drink there. (Vice Squad is touched by this act of mercy.) If the exception is abused via bingo-hall drinking or other unseemly behavior, there will be consequences to pay -- perhaps a curse will be imposed.

Vice Squad has been on the road, or at home, nodding; apologies for the interregnum.

Labels: alcohol, bingo, Britain, complementarities, licensing, Mill, robustness, smoking ban

 
Limits to the Theatre Dodge, Part 2
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:06 PM

Minnesota's public smoking ban does not apply to theatrical productions, which allowed some bars to skirt the ban by declaring their festivities to be theatre. (The man struck back, of course.) Colorado avoided similar contretemps by not providing an exception for theatrical productions. But this means that certain plays or other entertainments cannot grace the boards in Colorado. Some theatres took the state authorities to court, arguing that the smoking ban violated speech protections guaranteed by the First amendment. The trial court ruled for the state. Bruce Ramsey, a columnist for the Seattle Times, continues the story:

The theaters appealed. In the appeal, attorney Bruce Johnson of Seattle's Davis Wright Tremaine argued on behalf of 444 theaters across America that playwrights include smoking in a script in order "to better convey a sense of character" and "to establish a mood or state of mind." There are even plays about smoking, such as Bill Russell's "The Last Smoker in America." And because playwrights have the right to prohibit groups from performing altered versions of their plays, Johnson argued, the Colorado smoking ban might mean certain plays could not be performed at all.

On March 20 this year, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled against the theaters. Smoking, the judges said, "is not sufficiently expressive" to be afforded First Amendment protection. Public health trumps freedom.

Labels: litigation, smoking ban

 
British Pubs Suffering
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:54 PM

It's not just bingo that is being hurt by the British smoking ban. The pub industry has been weathering some hard times, no doubt worsened (to an unknown degree) by the smoking ban: "According to the British Beer and Pubs Association, the smoking ban in England and Wales combined with the credit crunch and a decline in drinking are responsible for closing pubs at their fastest rate in history – 27 a week."

Meanwhile, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, wants to raise the tax on alcoholic beverages. This has made him persona non grata at many a British pub -- the campaign to keep Mr. Darling out of pubs is being championed by some of those bloggers on the internets.

Maybe British pubs could try that theatre dodge to avoid the smoking ban? Or maybe things will soon smooth out, despite the smoking ban. There even looks to be some good news for British bingo. Photos of a spiffy (sort of) bingo parlour, including its outside smoking and gambling areas, are available here.

Labels: alcohol, bingo, Britain, smoking ban, taxes

 
Wouldn't Want Anything to Happen to Your Pretty Little Liquor License
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:45 PM

Showing contempt for government power is a sure way to bring down the forces of law and order. (Why is it that those forces seem to favor their version of order over law?) Remember those bars in Minnesota that found a way around the statewide smoking ban by declaring their activities to be theatrical productions (and hence exempt from the ban)? In Maplewood, the city attorney visited and put the squeeze on a bar that was using the theatrical productions dodge. Furthermore, the state Health Department is threatening the other "theatrical" bars -- about three dozen -- with megafines if they do not toe the official line. Maybe the Maplewood city attorney and the Health Department should, you know, enforce the law, rather than expanding the law to fit their preferences.

Labels: policing, smoking ban

 
Nicotini
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:24 PM

From Alcohol and Drugs History Society comes word of a Chicago Tribune article about a nicotine-infused alcoholic beverage -- the "nicotini" -- that one Chicago bartender has unveiled in response to the smoking ban. Vice Squad had noted a nicotini in Florida as early as November, 2004.

I mention Vice Squad's ahead-of-the-curviness on the nicotini to deflect justified criticism for recent blog neglect -- other duties, alas, have taken precedence. To further maintain the goodwill of the loyal Vice Squad reader, however, let me mention that a little while ago Vice Squad completed a long term project. Around the beginning of 2007 the Blogger software offered the possibility of applying "labels" to individual posts, and Vice Squad has been duly labelling subsequent "contributions". The problem was the stock of some 1100 prior Vice Squad posts that were unlabelled. After fourteen months of painstaking toil, I am happy to report that the backlog has been eliminated, and except for a possible handful of posts that were overlooked, the entire Vice Squad oeuvre has been catalogued. Time and date of the parade will be announced.

[Update: What labels are most popular? (1) alcohol; (2) drugs; (3) prostitution; (4) gambling; (5) Britain; (6) Prohibition; (7) policing; (8) teens; (9) tobacco; and (10) obscenity. What sort of blog is this, anyway?]

Labels: alcohol, Chicago, smoking ban, solipsism

 
WHO's Tobacco Message
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:39 PM

A couple weeks ago the World Health Organization issued a new report on the "Global Tobacco Epidemic" and what steps to implement to counter it. The toll that tobacco takes (and will continue to take in the future) on health is staggering, with more than 5 million tobacco-related deaths annually, supplemented by the threat that the tab will rise to more than 8 million by 2030. The cumulative impact over the course of the 21st century, according to the WHO, will be hundreds of millions of deaths, and (if that is not sufficient), the toll could be an attention-grabbing 1 billion tobacco-related deaths. (There are more than one billion smokers currently on planet earth.) Today, the New York Times picked up on the WHO report in a special Week in Review graphic, following an editorial earlier in the week calling for the US to submit the 2005 Tobacco Control Convention to the Senate for ratification.

The WHO offers six policies (read about them in this 19-page pdf) to try to stem the tobacco health cataclysm. My concern, of course, is that at least two of the WHO's suggested policies -- public smoking bans and high tobacco taxes -- do not meet standard Vice Squad precepts. (The higher taxes might be OK if the starting point is low.) Eventually, as I note in Chapter 3 of Regulating Vice, harm minimization (or health maximization) and vice policy robustness must always part company. Robustness accepts that there might be benefits available from vice consumption, but a strict harm minimization strategy ignores these putative benefits. There should be limits on how much an adult who chooses to smoke (or drink, or gamble, or sell/buy sex, or...) should be punished or inconvenienced, in the absence of harm to others.

Labels: Regulating Vice, robustness, smoking ban, taxes, tobacco, WHO

 
Smoking Bans
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:11 PM

Someone with more patience than I have could probably keep track of all the legislative and judicial developments worldwide with respect to public smoking bans. I'll offer a small subset instead:

(1) Wyoming and Virginia have scuttled, for now, attempts to establish statewide smoking bans. In the linked Washington Post story concerning Virginia, the following facts are provided: "About two-thirds of restaurants in Virginia ban smoking. In Northern Virginia, that figure is 80 percent, and in Fairfax County, almost 95 percent." I was surprised by this. I have long been puzzled over why more restaurants and bars do not go smoke free voluntarily in the absence of a ban, given that about 80 percent of American adults do not smoke. (I can think of lots of plausible stories, but I am not convinced by any of them.) These Virginia data make me think that maybe I just didn't give things enough time.

(2) The Illinois smoking ban has been a boon to Missouri riverboat casinos. Illinois is considering exempting its casinos from its new smoking ban.

(3) A bar somewhere in remote Minnesota has found what appears to be a legal means around the smoking ban. The state law exempts actors in theatrical productions, so Tennessee Williams' plays are still available in Minnesota. But what is a "theatrical production," anyway? The state law offers no clue. So on Saturday nights, the employees of the Minnesota bar dress up in Renaissance-style costumes, while the customers can become actors -- and hence smoking-eligible -- if they purchase for $1 and wear the appropriate button: a robust response to a non-robust law.

Labels: casino, Illinois, robustness, smoking ban

 
New York Does Not Believe in Dancing
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:06 PM

Last year Vice Squad stumbled across the fact that New York City establishments serving food or drink cannot also host dancing (even of the spontaneous sort by customers) unless the establishments have acquired a special "cabaret" license. The numbers of legal NYC dance houses are on the rise, we are now happy to report (or repeat, rather). Another dance parade is scheduled for May 17 to protest the draconian anti-dance legislation. A pro-dance activist [imagine that we have gotten to the point where there can be such a thing as a pro-dance activist] claims that the real problem is noise, not dance, and that the smoking ban is responsible for a New York noise boost -- as Vice Squad recently noted for Paris. Speaking of the Paris smoking ban, there's a claim that Paris clubs are learning what London pubs learned after the smoking ban went into effect: smoke covers up the ambient smell of these establishments, and that can be a good thing.

Labels: Britain, dancing, France, New York, smoking ban

 
Has the Smoking Ban Deeply Altered Paris?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:55 PM

Well, the City of Light apparently is awash (a' la Illinois) in those not quite enclosed shelters that, being outside, allow people to smoke. A recent British visitor, writing in the Guardian, notes that "some of the terraces [patios connected to bars/restaurants] seemed to be almost entirely enclosed: six smoking tables would be set within cellophane walls – a scene unfortunately reminiscent of an oxygen tent."

One of the unintended consequences of smoking bans is the opportunities that congregating outside have given smokers to socialize. There's a flip side to that particular consequence, however, one that Paris currently is experiencing: the newly outdoors socializing is making it harder for Parisians who reside near eating and drinking establishments to sleep.

Labels: France, smoking ban

 
Smoking Ban Winners, Illinois Version
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:44 PM

Years ago Vice Squad offered its first take on businesses that have been helped by public smoking bans -- prominent among them are outdoor heater manufacturers, and, in countries where it is legal, snus. The Chicago Tribune this week pointed to another business that is profiting from public smoking bans: makers of little smoking huts, shacks that are similar to some bus stop shelters and that cannot be fully enclosed (to comply with the law). The huts, according to the Trib article, can cost anywhere between $2,000 and $30,000, depending on how elaborate they are:

The shelter manufacturers won't release numbers but said their business has soared.

One leading supplier, Tafco Corp. of Melrose Park, estimates that Illinois orders for shelters have doubled.

How long will these shelters be tolerated? After all, look at what is happening to those early smoking ban winners, the outdoor heating manufacturers.

Labels: Illinois, smoking ban, snus

 
Ringing In Another Set of Smoking Bans
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:52 AM

Chicago and Paris join the public smoking ban club today; in Paris, the city authorities are distributing "pocket ashtrays" so smokers won't throw their butts on the ground. (Another new law further reduces the Paris-Chicago cultural divide: dogs are now welcome to the outdoor sections of Chicago restaurants.) The Illinois smoking ban does not exempt casinos, so some fiscal authorities are already budgeting for reduced tax revenues from existing casinos -- though the plans to expand gaming in Illinois continue to develop. Fort Worth's new smoking ban does not extend to bars -- and in a last-minute alteration, bingo parlors (a Vice Squad obsession) are exempt, too. Speaking of bingo, in New York, as of January 1, you can organize a fun bingo game in a senior center without fear of imprisonment -- just don't let the players smoke.

Labels: bingo, Chicago, France, gambling, Illinois, smoking ban

 
Economies of Scale in Reverse: Bingo
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:49 AM

In gambling, people tend to prefer larger payouts with lower probabilities of success to similar games with the same expected return but smaller top prizes. This is a major reason why many US states have combined their Lotto games, so they can offer the larger prizes that consumers prefer. When a gambling venture starts to decline, then, it can lose attractiveness in a hurry: the initial decline results in smaller prizes, which then drive away more players, and the process continues.

Vice Squad has been following the difficult times for the Bingo industry in Britain, which is in the midst of a significant decline. Among the culprits for the changing fortunes are the smoking ban and competition from online gaming. Today's Guardian offers a wonderful article and accompanying video based on the final round of the National Bingo Callers of the Year 2007 competition. Both the article and the video are highly recommended for those interested in getting a feel for British Bingo culture.

Labels: bingo, Britain, smoking ban

 
Smoking Ban Avoidance
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:03 PM

Vice Squad has noted some of the dodges that have been tried in the past -- such as becoming a consulate. But today's Los Angeles Times provides an article (annoying registration possibly required) that is practically a how-to guide for restaurants and other establishments in Nevada to avoid the state smoking ban. The ban does not apply to places that do not serve food -- oh, and it doesn't apply to the gaming floors of casinos, brothels, or strip clubs, either. Nevadans have priorities, after all. So one thing you could do, if you are a restaurant, is to become a brothel, strip club, or casino. But the article recounts less obvious (to me, at least) circumventions. You can break your restaurant into a bar (smoking allowed) and a restaurant (no smoking), where bar patrons can order their food from the physically connected but legally and atmospherically separated restaurant. Other establishments make the division temporally, being restaurant by day, smoke-infested bar by night.

One disgruntled smoker notes that he doesn't like to leave an establishment to have a cigarette: 'It feels like you're a junkie if you go outside to smoke.' He doesn't draw Vice Squad's conclusion: shouldn't junkies be able to indulge indoors legally, too? [Maybe junkies don't want to?: it feels like you're a smoker if you go inside to shoot up.]

Speaking of debauchery, Vice Squad is back from New Orleans, and primed to go on and on about Regulating Vice. I am particularly pleased to report that Regulating Vice made it to number 7 on Amazon's best seller list. Oops, wait, that was actually number 363,704; that's just about 100,000 places behind Ferns For American Gardens. I'm aiming at you, fernsters.

Labels: Nevada, smoking ban

 
Ban Bops Bingo Biz
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:02 PM

Public smoking bans continue to appear to be successful policies -- for reducing gambling. Vice Squad has of late been following the travails of the British Bingo industry in the wake of the smoking ban. Those travails continue. But if we Americans think we are exempt from the sacrifice of Bingo upon the altar of a smoke-free environment, we'd better think again. Bingo in Greenville, Mississippi -- along with the charities that are supported by the mandated "donations" from Bingo halls -- is feeling the pinch of the smoking ban. What is particularly galling for the Bingoers is that Greenville's law explicitly exempts their competitors, the casinos, from the smoking ban.

Labels: bingo, Britain, casino, gambling, smoking ban

 
British Bingo Update!
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:19 PM

The loyal Vice Squad reader keeps asking, hey, have there been any more developments concerning the harm to the British Bingo industry from the implementation of the smoking ban? Good news: the South Wales Echo has stepped up, reporting that bingo halls have seen a revenue decline of 15 to 20 percent. The article notes that the problem isn't just that bingo playing smokers are staying home, though some are (and perhaps engaging in internet gambling); rather, it is that those who still come to the Bingo parlour don't take part in the related on-site gambling during the fifteen minute break between Bingo sessions. Fears (both for Bingo parlours and for pubs more broadly) are that the situation could worsen in the winter, when people are less willing to step outside for a smoke.

One alcohol-serving club, according to the article, has responded to the smoking ban both by installing an outdoor smoking area, and by reducing the price of beer.

Speaking of gambling in Britain, September marks the completion of the implementation of the new gambling regulations. Among other things, internet gambling providers that meet the regulatory standards can now be licensed and legally advertise on television. One Telegraph columnist, noting how major British gambling providers have not licensed their internet operations in Britain, is unimpressed:

The point of the British licence is to encourage the world's casino websites to base themselves here, where they can be diligently regulated night and day by 50 compliance managers newly recruited for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. But of the thousands of online casino operators worldwide, only a handful - 14 the last time I looked - have applied for one.

Why? Because Brown decided to tax all British-based betting and casino sites at 15 per cent of gross profits. Not surprisingly, they have chosen to be based in much lower-taxed places, eg Malta, which taxes at a very acceptable 2.5 per cent.

Ladbrokes has not signed up for a British licence, nor has William Hill, which used to be based in Curacao, but now has moved to Malta. Oh - and since Malta is in the European Economic Association, it will be allowed to advertise on television.

Labels: bingo, Britain, gambling, internet, licensing, smoking ban

 
English Smoking Ban Enforcement
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:30 AM

The English didn't manage to convey anyone to the Tower for violating the smoking ban, at least in its first two weeks of operations. (That's the first two weeks of the smoking ban, not of the Tower -- the Tower has been around for a few months already.) One bar owner in Blackpool was fined for not enforcing the ban, but he has pleaded not guilty. (A new indignity for Blackpool, on top of losing out on the mega-casino.) During those first two weeks of July, some 89,000 establishments saw a smoking inspector call. The inspection brigade wrote a spate of warnings and proffered some sage advice, but only the Blackpool scofflaw induced a display of their full ticket-issuing authority.

The smoking ban in Wales had about a three month start on the English ban, and some pubs and bingo halls -- it's always the bingo halls that suffer the most -- have seen significant declines in their business.

More on Blackpool's dashed-gambling-hopes malaise here; one nearby place that has just adopted gambling, of the cyber variety, is that wacky Principality of Sealand located a few miles off the British coast.

Labels: bingo, Britain, smoking ban

 
Back in the USA...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:43 PM

...after sojourns in the UK and the Ukraine. (Vice Squad undergoes multi-stop travel only if the destinations lend themselves to wordplay. Watch out, Paraguay and Uruguay.) Mucho vice policy news out of Britain in the last few days. New Prime Minister Gordon Brown has scrapped the mega-casino planned for Manchester. All of the substitutions that would ensue in the wake of the public smoking ban were perhaps not thought through fully in advance; in particular, the smell of cigarette smoke covers up other odors, which can now have their day in the sun, as it were. And a failure to pass some implementing legislation in a timely manner has left Stoke-on-Trent as the one town in Britain where smoking in pubs lingers on, more-or-less without hindrance -- but only for a few days more.

Labels: Britain, casino, gambling, smoking ban, solipsism

 
Smoking Ban Update
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:34 AM

Greetings from London, where Vice Squad arrived just in time to enjoy the least favorable (for US tourists) exchange rate in, oh, 26 years. So this posting will have to be short, as what US of A'er can afford British internet cafes?

The smoking ban implementation appears to be smooth. There were the ironic last legal smoking parties, paralleling similar gatherings when national alcohol Prohibition went into effect in the US. There are the malcontents, who include the musician Joe Jackson, who questions whether there's really any hard evidence that secondary tobacco smoke harms people (as Vice Squad noted in July 2004). And there's the pesky problem of what bars and restaurants will do with old ashtrays, the ones surviving informal removals by customers. And for the facts, we can turn to the Observer's malcontents article:

The Facts

· Shortly after the Second World War 80 per cent of men smoked. Today, about 24 per cent of the population continues to enjoy lighting up. Dramatic falls were seen in the Seventies and Eighties, but the rate of quitting has slowed to 0.4 per cent a year

· The government's wants just 17 per cent of Britons to be smoking by 2010

· The UK-wide smoking ban does not apply to three places: Alderney, Sark and the Isle of Man

· Smoking will also still be allowed in prisons, army barracks and care institutions

· 600,000 of Britain's 10 million smokers will give up as a result of the ban, the
government believes

· Age reduces addiction to nicotine. One third of 20- to 24-year-olds smoke, but just one in seven people over 60 do

· The Treasury takes over £4 of the typical £5.50 cost of a packet of 20 cigarettes in tax, and makes about £8bn a year from smokers

· It costs the NHS an estimated £1.5bn a year to treat smokers made ill by their habit

· Smoking kills about 100,000 Britons a year through cancer, lung conditions and heart problems. About 1,000 people a day are admitted to hospital in England with a smoking-related illness

Incidentally, between taxes and that exchange rate problem, a pack of decent cigs costs about $12 in London.

Labels: Britain, Prohibition, smoking ban, solipsism