Smoking ban has little effect

Business not hurt, bar owners say

HILTON HEAD ISLAND — Despite dire predictions of business losses, Hilton Head Island bar owners say months after workplace smoking bans were passed, little has changed.

Charlie Center at the Dry Dock bar says he no longer goes home smelling like smoke, and his workers don't have to scrub the walls to get rid of the yellow tobacco stains.

The Island Packet newspaper surveyed 13 bars and restaurants in southern Beaufort County. Nine said business was as good as or better than before the smoking bans went into effect.

"I think people have settled into what currently exists on the island," said Anne-Marie Adams, executive director of the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce and Hilton Head Area Hospitality Association executive director of the hospitality association.

The newspaper's survey showed that restaurant owners who were not able to provide outdoor space to accommodate smokers seem to have lost more business than others.

That was the case at the Metropolitan Lounge, where Laura Moretti's customers had to walk outside her Park Plaza bar to have a cigarette at one of the two or three small outdoor tables she could fit. She said the bar suffered a 30 percent drop in business.

"The smokers have to sit outside in hot, humid conditions with mosquitoes eating them," Moretti said. "Business was down without a doubt."

About a dozen local governments across South Carolina have enacted smoking bans in the past two years.

The state Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments to settle conflicting lower court rulings on the workplace smoking bans. One judge upheld Sullivans Island's first-in-the-state ban. Another judge rejected Greenville's ban.