Jul 24, 2005 - 23:28:42 CDT
Two Williston bingo operations expect to lose most of their customers. In Wahpeton, a factory's employees will take their cigarettes onto outdoor patios. Across North Dakota, restaurant-bar businesses will be going smoke-free, rather than pay for the remodeling needed to allow continued puffing.A week from Monday, a new law imposing statewide restrictions on indoor smoking take effect. Someone who lights up indoors in public buildings, or inside most businesses, may be fined $500. A proprietor who allows illegal smoking could be fined $100 or more.
The law allows smoking in bars, but it is no longer permitted in other locations where smoking has long been common, such as bowling alleys and bingo halls. Public health officials say the change will provide a fresh impetus for smokers to drop the habit.
"I think this is a really good thing for the general health of North Dakota," said Nancy Thoen, the tobacco prevention coordinator for Central Valley Health, an agency that covers Stutsman and Logan counties.
"For people who have been wanting to quit, this is a great opportunity for them," Thoen said. "They're going to have to cut back, because they can't smoke at work."
Colleen Larson, the tobacco prevention coordinator in Richland County's health department, said many establishments are going smoke-free, instead of trying to make arrangements -- such as enclosing the bar area in a restaurant -- that would allow smoking to continue.
"A lot of owners are relieved that the law will take away their decision," she said. "But other places know that won't work for them."
Roseanne Marquez, who is the gaming manager for the Williston State College Foundation and the Williston Basin Skating Club, said the law will halt smoking in Williston's events center, where the two organizations host bingo games for one day a week each.
Bingo draws 85 to 100 people on each of the two days, and about three-quarters of the customers smoke, Marquez estimates.
"They just said they wouldn't come," she said. "It's basically going to end up hurting our charities, and shutting our bingo down."
Bowlers on the six lanes at the Tommy Turtle Lanes and Restaurant in Bottineau will no longer be able to smoke while they bowl, said the business' owner, Tom Kessler. The restaurant's smoking section will have to be discontinued.
Kessler believes it is wrong for the state to regulate smoking within a private business. Opponents of the smoking law made similar arguments during the North Dakota Legislature this year, but they did not prevail.
Customers who don't like smoking are not compelled to come into his business, Kessler said.
"I thought we lived in a free society," Kessler said. "I don't force anybody to come in and do business with me. If cigarettes are so bad, why doesn't the government just stop having people farm and make the darn things?"
In Wahpeton's Imation plant, employees who now visit enclosed, separately ventilated rooms for a puff will have to go to an outdoor patio, said Marilee Tischer, the plant's human resource manager.
The company, which makes data storage diskettes and tapes, will also be offering quit-smoking classes and materials through Richland County's health department and its own insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. The company has about 600 workers; Tischer said she is unsure how many of them use tobacco.
Imation has been circulating information about the law, and the company's compliance plans, for weeks, Tischer said. There has even been talk about refurbishing the smoking rooms within the plant's three buildings, and installing fitness equipment.
"Most of our employees who smoke were saying, we knew it was going to happen sometime," she said. "They're kind of resigned to it."
In Minot, which has had a city ban on restaurant smoking for more than three years, and Fargo, which has barred most indoor smoking since Dec. 1, there have been relatively few questions about the law's implementation, public health officials say. In Grand Forks, an anti-smoking law which is tougher in some respects than the state legislation also takes effect Aug. 1.
Lori Brierley, tobacco prevention director at Minot's First District Health Unit, said the city's ban on restaurant smoking won quick public acceptance, and she expects the state law will get a similar welcome.
"The majority of the people in Minot are nonsmokers, and they really appreciated (Minot's) ordinance," Brierley said. "It didn't take very long before they had an expectation that, this is how it should be everywhere. For most people, I think the new state law will be like that."
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