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  • Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza Doesn't agree: With a handwritten sign behind him that reads "This Facility is Smoke Free," Snacks Cafe owner Kenny Lamb offers his opinion on the smoking ordinance Wednesday at his bar in West Terre Haute. Listening in are Jeanie Macak and Kenny's brother, Randy Lamb.

    MET 080112 SMOKE LAMB.jpg

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August 2, 2012

Smoke still clearing on impact of Vigo tobacco ordinance

Brian Boyce The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — One month into Vigo County’s tobacco ordinance and some smokers report the tavern business is going down in ashes.

Kenny Lamb, owner of Snack’s Cafe in West Terre Haute, is actively encouraging attorneys to consider the case.

“It’s killing me,” he said inside the long-time hangout on West Paris Avenue. If tavern owners would group together and find an attorney, perhaps they could overturn the local ordinance, he said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Paul Mason, president of the Vigo County Board of Commissioners, said he’s heard both extremes this past month.

“I’ve heard people say they go out to eat more in places that they didn’t go to before, and I’ve heard some say they’ll do more things at home rather than go out in the taverns and bars,” he said.

Meanwhile, July has been a hot month, and some tavern business could be down simply because people aren’t going out, he said.

“I think it’s really too early for us to tell,” he said of what impact the 30-day-old ordinance might have on businesses.

Patrons at the North Star Tavern on North Lafayette and Boston avenues said there’s no question business is down because of the smoking ban. Lonnie Iocoangeli was tending bar for the few folks inside Wednesday. A non-smoker herself, she said she’d rather work in a bar that allowed smoking.

“I’d say our sales are down 30 percent,” she said of business since the ordinance took effect July 1.

Brenda Fadse sat with friends Karen and Kenny Bennett, all with their packs of cigarettes dutifully set on the bar. In between beers, they and other smokers took cigarettes outside into the 90-degree heat, then returned inside to drink. All three agreed with Iocoangeli that the electricity bills would ultimately be impacted.

“Hear that air conditioning running?” Iocoangeli asked, pointing to the door which kept opening and closing.

Karen Bennett said people work all day in hot plants, or outside. The last thing they want to do after work is go outside for a cigarette. People that don’t smoke, she said, should go to what establishments choose to be smoke-free, leaving the decision up to the individual owners.

“I think it’s going to knock the bars down,” she said. “If they’re trying to make this a dry county, they’re going to succeed.”

Fadse said the North Star Tavern crowd has thinned greatly as a result of the ordinance, and many of her friends have told her it isn’t worth going out if they have to stand outside to smoke. The ordinance infringes on the rights of property owners and smokers alike, she said.

Karen Bennett said with the economy in the state it’s in, with high unemployment and limited job opportunities, smoking in a tavern is one of the few comforts left.

The group echoed comments made by Lamb, who distinguished between taverns and chain restaurants which also serve alcohol. Karen Bennett said restaurants are set up to benefit from people coming and going quickly, whereas taverns are for people who want to stay longer. And it’s places such as the latter most likely to feel the pinch of the ordinance, she said, predicting the death of the independent taverns in Terre Haute.

Across town near the Clay County line, at Twiggy’s on U.S. 40, Cara MacKenzie agreed that restaurants and taverns are different in those regards. With pizza specials filling tables for lunch customers, she said the ordinance hasn’t impacted their business at all.

“It’s always been non-smoking in here anyway,” she said, pointing to the outside decks on which smokers can light up cigarettes. But for taverns it is different, she said, observing that smoking and those places “just go hand-in-hand.”

Lamb said his establishment does serve food as well as alcohol, but estimates his business is down between 50 and 60 percent this month.

Bill All, who takes Lamb’s metal cans to be recycled, said the business was short more than 1,000 cans this July from prior months.

“It really hurts because they don’t want to come in and then go out and smoke,” he said.

Even Lamb’s own brother, Randy, said he’s coming in less because of the ordinance.

“I stop in once or twice a week, then I’m outta here,” he said, adding he works all day in the heat and has no intention of coming in and out of a tavern just to smoke. The government, he remarked, doesn’t mind him paying the sales tax on cigarettes though.

Lamb said he’s been running Snack’s Cafe about 30 years, buying it for himself about 18 years ago. An old neighborhood tavern, he said the clientele is largely friends and family, people who’ve known each other all their lives.

“You’d be lucky to get a seat in here on the first of the month,” he said of the normal crowd. Wednesday afternoon featured $1 beer specials, and even with that as a draw, the traffic just wasn’t there, he said.

“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Lamb said.

Recent initiatives in New York to regulate the amount of cola one can drink are likewise un-American, he said, comparing the ideology to that of “Russia in the 1960s.”

“It’s not going to improve,” he said of business, adding he’s down to tending the bar himself. “People hate to have to get up and go outside to smoke.”



Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.

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