Former New England middleweight boxing champ Curtis “Lester” Mombelly hung
up his gloves in 1998 and two years later bought a restaurant.
He was safer in the ring, he said.
Not long after Mombelly, 36, bought the Heritage Tap in Pawtucket he developed a nagging cough and chest pains – symptoms foreign to a former boxer who trained by running about 10 miles every other day, lifting weights and sparring.
“I couldn’t get rid of the cough I had, and every day when I got home from the bar, my chest felt tight, and my eyes would be so red and bloodshot, I felt like I had been in the ring,” Mombelly said. “I finally went to the emergency room, and the doctor took pictures of my lungs. He asked me how many packs of cigarettes I smoke every day. I never smoke.”
The doctor concluded the problem was the restaurant, and suggested Mombelly sell it or go smoke-free. On the way to his business the next day, he picked up “No Smoking” signs. Without warning and to the horror of patrons and employees, he posted the signs immediately.
While business owners can currently choose whether to let people smoke on their property or not, it might not be their choice for long.
The state Senate passed legislation April 29 that, if approved by the House and the governor, would ban smoking in nearly every public place in Rhode Island. The bill is being sent to a House Committee for consideration. It would exclude cigar clubs, smoking bars and Lincoln Park and Newport Grand.
The House Committee recently passed a similar bill introduced by House Majority Leader Gordon Fox.
Business owners across the state are wondering what the fallout will be if smoking is banned. Mombelly said he was pleasantly surprised by the impact of his own action.
“The first week was like walking on egg shells. I thought I’d lose 30 to 40 percent of my business, but I felt it would be worth it,” he said. “Within the second or third week of going non-smoking, I saw 25 to 35 percent more business, and it has stayed that way ever since.”
Families that never ate at the Tap before started showing up regularly, Mombelly said, and some regulars who smoke “thanked him because when they were allowed to smoke at the bar, they would smoke more” than usual.
“I’m not preaching for everyone to go non-smoking – everyone should do what is right for them – but I want people to know that it does not hurt business,” he said. “It’s a safety issue.”
Many business owners are concerned that if people who smoke aren’t allowed to light up inside, they won’t bother coming at all – and smoker Cher Silvia said they should worry.
The Tiverton native, who moved to Florida in 1991, said the smoking ban in Florida, which took effect in July 2003, is a violation of smokers’ rights. The national smokers’ rights group Silvia belongs to, The Smoker’s Club and Forces, urges business owners to sue states where smoking bans are imposed on most facilities while exempting others, like Lincoln Park, saying it violates the Equal Protection Amendment. The amendment limits the powers of the state and guarantees equal protection under the law for all citizens of the United States.
“I have not stepped foot in a bar or a restaurant since July. I don’t want to go to a place where I have to leave to smoke. I stay away on purpose because if the business owner won’t stand up for their private property then I will not patronize them,” she said.
The Rhode Island Workers’ Safety Act of 2004, sponsored by Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski, a Democrat representing New Shoreham and South Kingstown, would ban smoking in restaurants, bars, malls, athletic fields, health care facilities, schools, public restrooms, public transit waiting areas and many other facilities.
Sosnowski introduced similar legislation for the past three years to “help improve the health and lives of many non-smokers who, because of their jobs, are exposed to dangerous secondhand smoke on a daily basis.” If passed, the ban would take effect on March 1, 2005.
The American Heart Association, the American Lung and Cancer associations, the AFL-CIO, Ocean State Action and the Campaign for a Healthy Rhode Island all support the legislation, but there are a number of dissidents.
Sosnowski argues the smoking ban would be similar to the types of state health and safety laws restaurants and bars have to comply with to do business with the public.
The senator said she isn’t “thrilled” the House of Representatives passed a version of the bill that allows Lincoln Park and Newport Grand patrons to smoke until October 2006, but said she understands the reasoning behind it.
“We are talking about gaming facilities that bring in one-third of the state’s revenue and are in competition with casinos in Connecticut – which are on Indian reservations and aren’t subject to those laws. These are hard times right now, and I can see where the House is coming from. They are looking at revenues,” Sosnowski said.
Surveys in states where smoking bans are enforced show businesses are not negatively affected by smoking bans. Maine, Connecticut, New York, Delaware, Florida and California, dozens of cities, including Boston, and hundreds of communities have enacted smoke-free workplace laws.
As smokers fight for their rights, non-smokers fighting for the right to breathe clean air have plenty of backers. Margaret Kane, executive director of the American Lung Association, argues that “nowhere in the Constitution does it say people have a right to smoke – no one has the right to pollute.”
“This isn’t about smoking being offensive. Workers have a right to a safe, healthy environment, and cigarette smoke is neither safe nor healthy,” Kane said.
Secondhand smoke contains more than 4,000 substances, including more than 50 compounds that have been identified as carcinogens, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Though the Smoker’s Club holds tightly to a federal judge’s 1998 ruling in favor of the tobacco industry that decided the EPA wrongly declared secondhand smoke a dangerous carcinogen in a 1993 report, there is overwhelming scientific evidence showing its cancer-causing effects.
The National Institutes of Health’s most recent National Toxicology Program
Report on Carcinogens listed secondhand smoke as a “known human carcinogen.”
Studies from the EPA, the World Health Organization and the Surgeon General
also conclude that secondhand smoke contains cancer-causing chemicals and is
responsible for 35,000 cases of heart disease in the United States each year.