As a national debate on whether or not Irish bars should become smoke-free zones gingerly begins - and with 50 Dublin bartenders taking a class-action suit against tobacco manufacturers - this may be a good moment to look at how anti-smoking legislation has worked in San Francisco. Padraig Collins takes a look at how anti-smoking legislation has worked in San Francisco.
The war between this city's permissive traditions and California's obsession with health protection, between the right to smoke and the right to breathe clean air, has been running a long time. So far, however, smokers have lost every battle.
Smoking has been banned from the state's workplaces, restaurants, sports arenas and public buildings. The final sanctuary fell to the health lobby on January 1st 1998, when smoking in bars was outlawed, with offenders facing an initial fine of $100. The move was greeted as, literally, a life-saver by organisations such as the American Lung Association. But the new law has had a rough ride in America's most health-conscious state, and especially in San Francisco.
For a start, as with most laws, there were loopholes. The law was primarily enacted to protect employees, so it did not cover bars in which only the owners worked. This led to some rather imaginative ownership schemes in smaller bars. Terraces are also not covered in the act, which caused many bars to reduce the size of their car-parks to add a canopied smoke-room.
It also soon emerged that enclosed areas not serviced by bar-staff were exempt from the new law. The only burden for smoking customers in such an area was that they had to bring drinks to their table without the aid of a waiter.
The greatest resistance to the new law, however, came not from nicotine-addicted customers but from the very people it was designed to help - bar workers.
In a line of work where the biggest proportion of what you earn comes directly from the customer, anti-smoking legislation has resulted in a reported 30 per cent drop in tips. And so, despite a University College of San Francisco study showing significant health improvements among bartenders, the majority of them are vehemently against the law.
Even in a state where four out of five adults do not smoke, the comment by one smoker in a bar that anyone objecting should "go to a f**king juice bar and drink a juice" is more typical than you might expect. Enforcement of the ban has been hampered by the fact that different areas have different state bodies charged with its enactment. In San Francisco, this duty falls to both the health and police departments, while in Los Angeles the fire department is involved. San Francisco, with only five penalties imposed in the first year of the law's operation, seemed to be operating on a "live and let live" policy. Police seemed to feel that, if there was a murder to investigate, someone smoking in a bar lost importance.
The law was, in fact, so un-enforced that it led to Dian Kiser, director of The Californian Smoke-Free Bar Program, labelling San Francisco as the "worst city in the state" for enactment. So many bars in the city tolerated smoking that it got a reputation as being the place to go to in California if you wanted to both drink and smoke.
Bus Stop, a bar on Union Street, suffered a 20 per cent drop in patronage following enactment of the law. Bar manager Gabe Ferroni called the Health Department to find out the precise consequences of not enforcing the law. He was told that once customers were told that smoking in bars is illegal in California, the responsibility passed to the individual. The bar staff called former customers and told them they could come back and smoke.
However, the law may finally be showing its teeth. Last July Timothy Delaney, owner of Delaney's bar in the Marina District, was sued by the city under public nuisance and unfair business practice laws. It was claimed in court that Mr Delaney's alleged defiance of the anti-smoking laws gave him an unfair advantage over bars that comply.
Mr Delaney could justifiably counter that he had been singled out. A couple of blocks from his premises another Irish bar, The Fiddler's Green, has signs on the wall that it is a smoke-free, law-abiding premises. Every drink is served on a napkin adorned with a smoke-free sign. So is every plate of food. The bar also, helpfully, provides ashtrays on every table. And each ashtray is full, not of peanuts or pretzels, but of law-breakers' cigarette ash.
If I hadn't been greatly missing an Irish breakfast fry-up, I might even have complained. And therein lies the rub: even if smoking in bars in Ireland were to be banned, would the ban be obeyed? And who would complain if it were not?