Several D.C. Council members vowed again yesterday to pass a smoking ban in the city, hoping that the experiences of New York City and Montgomery County will make this latest effort a success.
A similar effort failed two years ago under heavy lobbying by the Washington restaurant association, which argued that a ban would hurt business. Last year, a Superior Court judge blocked an effort to place an initiative on the ballot that would have achieved the same goal.
D.C. Council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4) draws applause for his support of a ban on smoking in the workplace during a rally at a Georgetown restaurant.
(Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)
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Current law allows smoking in office buildings, health care facilities and day-care centers as well as in bars and restaurants. The new law would ban smoking in those places, while exempting outdoor dining areas, cigar bars and tobacco shops.
Proponents say the restrictions would be similar to bans in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities. A smoking ban went into effect in October 2003 in many parts of Montgomery County.
"If we can have a vote on baseball, we should be able to vote on smoke-free workplaces," council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large), lead sponsor of the bill, told supporters gathered yesterday in the smoke-free dining room of Nathan's, a Georgetown bar and restaurant.
Supporters of the ban said this latest effort will be easier. They say that the experiences of New York and Montgomery County show that a ban would not devastate businesses and that polls show increased support for the ban in Washington. They also noted that three of the legislation's opponents were defeated at the polls last year.
The American Cancer Society cited studies that showed bar and restaurant receipts went up by 8.7 percent in New York in the first year of the city's ban. A study of meal and alcohol tax receipts in 235 towns in Massachusetts showed no difference between those establishments that ban smoking and those that do not.
D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) said such statistics give "a lie to what the restaurant association says when they say it would be bad for business."
Andrew J. Kline, legal counsel for the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, said his organization will continue to fight any attempt to ban smoking citywide because it would hurt some businesses and deny their patrons who smoke the opportunity to do so.
Kline said the evidence is not so clear in Montgomery County. He said revenue has been flat in places with a ban compared with other areas that have shown strong growth.
Smoking opponents said a majority of votes on the full council is within reach. But getting it out of committee is the highest hurdle. The legislation was referred to a committee chaired by Carol Schwartz (R-At Large), who opposed the ban two years ago.
"The only reason to refer it to Carol's committee is to kill it," said Avram Fechter, director of NoSmokePacDC.
Schwartz said that she could support banning smoking in offices and health care facilities but that banning it in bars and restaurants would hurt the city's number one industry.
"I believe in choices," Schwartz said. "There are already 200 smoke-free restaurants in the city."
Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3) said proponents will not allow the bill to die again, even if that means going around Schwartz.
Joslyn N. Williams, president of the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO, said three-quarters of white-collar workers are protected by smoke-free workplace laws, compared with only 13 percent of bartenders.
"Every worker deserves the right to breathe smoke-free air," Williams said.
