The Big Apple: Cigarettes and Central Planners

Duke may be auctioning off his final 34 chairs if the Coalition for a Smoke Free City gets its way. The Coalition is seeking to eliminate the size exemption and expand the smoke-free mandate to every eating and drinking establishment. Duke's restaurant, renamed, is now Drake's Drum-The Smoke Inn. Illustrating the Law of Unintended Consequences, any health risks from secondhand smoke at Drake's, with its now higher concentration of smokers, will most likely be increased because of Local Law 5. "Why should bureaucrats get involved?" Duke asks. "I run a pub. I don't do behavior modifica tion. " For outdoor diners in New York City's sidewalk cafes, Local Law 5 decrees that Ralph Reiland, Associate Professor ofEconom ics at Robert Morris College, owns Amel's Res taurant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. only 25 percent of the customers can be smoking at anyone time. Pedestrians, walk ing by the cafe tables, can smoke in any percentages.

After the first month of operating under the smoking ban, a poll of 1,000 New York City restaurant owners shows 81 percent saying that Local Law 5 represents "over regulation of small business," and 55 per cent saying that their sales had declined. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity may be Jimmy Duke's next headache. Allegedly, for folks with MCS, a whiff of secondhand perfume can bring on anything from a head ache to cardiac arrest. If the hostess at Drake's Drum seats too many heavily fra granced customers at one time, Duke may end up as a co-defendant in a manslaughter by-environment lawsuit. Emboldened by the enactment of Local Law 5, anti-smoking activist Nancy Cole man says, "We can now redirect our efforts to the area of toxins and fragrances." The New York Post reports that perfume wear ers already face restrictions in San Fran cisco. Charcoal grills may be next on Ms. Coleman's list.

The Market at Its Best In Manhattan's NYNEX Yellow Pages, religious organizations fill only three-quar ters of one page. The city's restaurant list ings, starting on the next page, go on for 28 658 pages of tiny print, beginning with Abyssinia Ethiopian Restaurant and ending with Zut to's on Hudson. There are nearly 300 restaurants listed on each of those 28 phone directory pages, with a total of more than 8,000restaurants in New York City. It's the free market at its best-a creative, competitive, and thriving industry, providing superb opportunities to entrepre neurs and an infinite array of choices to customers. If there's any industry that is fully capable of self-regulating itself regarding smoking, while meeting the needs of its varied clien tele without new laws, surely it's the New York City restaurant business. With over 8,000 restaurants, owned by people who know that they profit most through satisfy ing their customers, it seems clear that the market is thoroughly adept at adjusting to customers who prefer a smoke-free envi ronment, if they request it, and equally capable of catering to others who wish to have a cigarette after dinner.

659 The Russian Tea Room, for instance, has two floors of dining rooms, each with well over 35 seats. Rather than entirely outlaw ing smoking on both floors, as Local Law 5 mandates, why not permit the owners of the restaurant to designate one floor as smoking and the other as nonsmoking, if that's what their patrons wish? Other restaurant owners could fully ban smoking, but that would be purely a decision by the owners, not a citywide regulation. In the end, the result might be 3,000 smoke free restaurants, 2,500restaurants that don't regulate smoking, and 2,500 that had sepa rate accommodations for smokers and non smokers, all dictated primarily by the mar ket. That would hardly be a dilemma when tourists stopped at the hotel concierge to ask for a good Chinese restaurant. "Let's see, we have 106 good ones that are smoke-free and 92 where you're permitted to smoke. The best dozen or so are marked with a star." D o o The Foundation for Economic Education Reunion Celebrating its Golden Jubilee with Lady Margaret Thatcher The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel New York City April 11, 1996 Save the date!

An opportunity that comes only once in a lifetime.