By David Harris | Flint Journal

April 29, 2010, 9:00AM

Under the new law, only cigar bars, tobacco specialty stores and casinos will be allowed exemptions to the smoking ban.

Jeffrey LaMonde | The Flint Journal - Andrew W. Meadows, 45, of Flint, lights up a cigarette at Paul's Pipe Shop, 647 S. Saginaw in downtown Flint, Wednesday afternoon. After the smoking ban that goes into effect May 1st, places like Paul's Pipe Shop will be one of the few places patrons will still be allowed to smoke in. Under the new law, only cigar bars, tobacco specialty stores and casinos will be allowed exemptions to the smoking ban.

GENESEE COUNTY — Don’t call the cops if you see someone breaking the law by lighting up at a bar or restaurant this weekend — call the health department.

The Genesee County Health Department will be responsible for enforcing the new smoking rules when a statewide ban on smoking in bars, restaurants and workplaces goes into effect at 6 a.m. Saturday.

With just 13 workers available to regulate the ban at the county’s estimated 1,000 bars and restaurants, the health department has lined up nearly 30 volunteers to go undercover looking for smokers.

Nonsmoker Rick Snyder of Linden has doubts about how the law will be enforced.

“To me, it’s just setting up for society to be a bunch of lawbreakers,” said Snyder, 49.

Ann Goldon, health education coordinator for the GCHD, said the health department won’t start making unannounced visits to look for smokers until it receives complaints from patrons about a business.

If complaints continue after the health department talks with the establishment’s manager or owner, Goldon said someone will be sent to look for smokers.

Violators — individuals and businesses — can be fined up to $100 for a first offense and $500 for each additional offense. Repeated violations could cost a business its food service license or draw the attention of the state Liquor Control Commission.

County health officials say they will try to avoid fines and will try to work with the business.

“I anticipate there will be good compliance,” said Mark Valacak, county health officer. “The majority (of business owners) are in favor of the regulations.”

Don Vohwinkle, owner of Gina’s Pizza in Flushing, isn’t among the fans of the law and said he doesn’t like government telling him how to run his business.

“We’ve had quite a few customers that said they’ll be staying home (after the ban),” he said, adding he will comply with the law and expects most people will get used to it.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm in December signed the smoking ban into law to make most workplaces, restaurants and bars smoke-free.

Paul's Pipe Shop

Casinos and pipe shops, such as Paul’s Pipe Shop in Flint, are exempt.

But bowling alleys are not. Galaxy Lanes, 2226 E. Hill Road in Grand Blanc, will look a lot different, said owner Ken Hochstein.

He said he may lose some customers but also may gain more back who enjoy the smoke-free atmosphere.

“I think more people will come back,” he said. “People just can’t sit around and do nothing.”

Jack Kern, owner of Jack’s Place in Flushing, said the effect on his business will be minimal.

“I just don’t see it being a handicap,” he said. “It might take a month or two to adapt.”

Michigan will be the 38th state to add the law, and Goldon said enforcement was not much of a problem in those states.

The health benefits to the general public make the effort well worth it, said Goldon. Secondhand smoke is the third leading cause of preventable deaths, according to the state Department of Community Health.

About 300 establishments in Genesee County have already gone smoke-free, Goldon said.

The law can’t come soon enough for Monte Frick, 45, of Goodrich.

Smoking ban

Beginning Saturday, Michigan will become the 38th state to implement a smoking ban. The law prohibits smoking in public places such as restaurants, bars and hotels. Below are answers to some commonly asked questions about the ban.

Q: Where can’t people smoke?
A: Public places, such as an auditorium, arena, theater and concert hall, food-service establishments and place of employment, unless exempted.

Q: Will smoking be allowed in private clubs such as Veterans of Foreign Wars halls?
A: No. If the place has employees and serves food or drink, it is considered a public place.

Q: Can employees or patrons smoke outside a business?
A: Yes, but there is no distance specified in the law for how far someone has to be from a no-smoking area to legally light up, although that distance can be governed by local ordinance in some communities. Genesee County area health officials recommend a smoker be a “reasonable distance” so that second-hand smoke doesn’t drift into the business. The person also must be in an outdoor area where food, drinks or both are not intended to be served or consumed.

Q: Can I smoke on the patio or deck of a bar?
A: No. The deck and other outdoor spaces are considered part of the establishment.

Q: What should businesses and employees do if someone is smoking?
A: Ask them to stop. If they continue to smoke, refuse service and ask them to leave. The state recommends “you communicate this incident with your staff and log it into any tracking mechanism your establishment may have to document your actions.”

Q: Can an individual or business be fined for failure to comply with the law?
A: Violators — individuals and businesses — can be fined up to $100 for a first offense and $500 for each additional offense. An establishment that doesn’t comply could lose its food-service license.

Q: What businesses are exempt?
A: Cigar bars, tobacco specialty retail stores and the gaming floors of some casinos. To allow smoking as a cigar bar, the establishment must make at least 10 percent of its profit from the sale of cigars and from humidors. Even then, customers can only smoke cigars. The law prohibits more cigar bars from opening in the state.

Q: What about a hookah lounge. Can I smoke there?
A: Hookah lounges may allow smoking under the provision of specialty tobacco shops. However, they are not allowed to sell food or drink as a specialty tobacco shop, although snacks from a vending machine are permitted under the law.

Q: Is smoking banned in hotel/motel rooms?
A: Yes.

Q: If a business only has a liquor license, does the new law apply?
A: Yes. The business is considered a food-service establishment based on an amendment to the Food Law Act.

Simon Reynolds
Last Updated: April 27. 2010 6:44PM UAE / April 27. 2010 2:44PM GMT

Saw a chap smoking a pipe the other day. He was sitting in a café in a mall, reading a newspaper and drawing contentedly on a pipe. And it occurred to me that I don’t remember when last I saw such a thing.

Now, you understand that I am not talking about a shisha, but the sort of thing smoked by Maigret, Harold Wilson, General MacArthur – and you’ll notice how far back in time I have had to go for examples.

It appears to be a practice that has gone underground in the past decade or so, a casualty no doubt of the anti-smoking climate. I know that the British Pipesmokers’ Council discontinued its Pipesmoker of the Year award in 2004, worried that the event might fall foul of new laws against the promotion of tobacco.

So it was refreshing in a way to see this fellow puffing away as he read his newspaper. It also stirred an atavistic yearning, mixing memory and desire (it is, after all, cruel April), taking me back more than 30 years to my own days as a pipe-smoker. Aesthetically, there are not many men who can get away with a pipe. Medically, I imagine the proportion is even smaller. But the unwitting agent of my rekindled hunger in the café could. He had the strong face and candid expression necessary to carry it off. I do not.

Nor did Bing Crosby. Watching him with that idiotic briar in Holiday Inn, for example, I just want to strangle the props supervisor. I similarly cringe when I come across old photographs of myself posing pompously with my pipe.

But the look of the thing aside, I did enjoy it. I lived in Harare then and used to smoke my first pipe of the day sitting outside on a chair tipped against a whitewashed wall, the warmth of the early sun tempering the lingering chill of the night air.

Eventually, of course, the chair broke, but that’s not why I gave up. That was the result of a doctor’s advice after I contracted a particularly obstinate chest infection.

I had a girlfriend who worked in a tobacconist’s shop – the one, you will not be surprised to learn, where I took my tobacco business – and she told me a story that in recollection has something of the quality of an urban myth.

It seems that a man who had bought a pipe in the shop returned after a month or two, complaining that the bowl had burnt through. And sure enough, there was a charred-looking hole in the back, just above the stem. Great consternation and embarrassment, of course; the pipe was replaced and the customer compensated with a couple of free packets of tobacco.

A similar interval later he was back. It had happened again: there was a hole you could put your little finger through. This time consternation gave way to incredulity and they asked him how and where he smoked. “I’m a taxi driver, and I like to smoke on the road,” he replied. Didn’t his passengers object? “Yes, so I drive with my window open.”

Never mind the bowl of the pipe in the resulting inferno, I thought. The fellow must have had a tongue like asbestos.

Oh, and I’d usually not include hookah smoking, but for some reason, this caught my eye. Must be that clock in the background or something.

Ooh la la!

PARIS – France – The French government has commissioned an advertising campaign to highlight the dangers of smoking whilst performing fellatio.

The ad, which aired on Tuesday night shocked the French nation.

“It showed a young lady smoking a cigarette in front of a man’s crotch. She just smoked, and smoked and smoked. People were so disgusted at this that complaints jammed the switchboards to the French Advertising Complaints Board,” Jacques Le Pipe, told Le Monde newspaper.

The French government have been trying to avert the terrible problem of French women who are so bored at performing the daily French ritual of fellatio that they routinely have to smoke during the procedure.

“fumer le cigare”

“I myself have been affected by this atrocity. She was an intern in the Ministry — been there only a week. I unzipped and let it out in deep anticipation of the delights that awaited me from her moist pert lips, when she took out a box of Gitanes, calmly picked one out, looked up at me and started to smoke. I was so appalled I called for security and they kindly removed the young lady from my office. Last I heard, she is now working in a dog food factory somewhere in Calais,” Jean Baptiste, the Minister of the Interior told Le Monde.

Other members of the French parliament like French president, Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday that he had not, as yet, had a problem with Carla. This is possibly due to the president’s weak ticker and his physician’s advice to not get too excited anymore or risk immediate death.

Where’s Bill Clinton and his cigar when you need him?

colors of night by ~kurobane260 on deviantART

Pipe ID by ~Quiet-Sam on deviantART

Hillbilly Bass by ~oddlead on deviantART

7:53 p.m.: Washington Post Drive, overheated motor. Report of a dishwasher smoking. Upon arrival occupant had shut off power to unit and it had stopped smoking.

Bad dishwasher! That was my best meerschaum, you bastard!

The National staff
* Last Updated: January 08. 2010 2:44PM UAE / January 8. 2010 10:44AM GMT

Nasser Suleman, the owner of Al Bakri smoking shop, smokes a pipe at his shop on Airport Road. Ryan Carter / The National

Dubai will immediately implement the federal smoking ban, but Abu Dhabi is awaiting clarification before deciding which areas of the city will be non-smoking.

On Wednesday, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, signed a law effecting a nationwide smoking ban and controlling the import and advertising of tobacco products throughout the emirates.

Yesterday, uncertainty was rampant among private businesses and government officials alike over when and where the legislation would come into force.

A number of tobacco shop owners said they were awaiting clarification as to how the law would effect them.

However, the new law appears to make little difference to the way most emirates already operate.

Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al Khaimah and Dubai have all implemented full or partial smoking bans since 2007 and the new law varies little from the existing legislation laid down by the respective municipalities.

The Abu Dhabi Municipality, however, said it needed further instruction before publicising what role it would take in enforcing the law.

The Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority said it was “trying to clarify the situation with the federal authorities” before establishing whether hotels and restaurants in the city are affected.

Details on which premises are expected to comply are expected from the Ministry of Health in the coming week. An appendix to the law is expected within a month, providing confirmation of who will be affected.

Dubai, however, will begin to enforce the new law immediately, said Salem Mesmar, the municipality’s assistant director general for health, safety and environment control.

Abu Dhabi and Umm al Qaiwain stand to see the most change from the law, because every other emirate already has some form of smoking ban.

While the law bans smoking altogether in hospitals, mosques, educational institutes and sports facilities, its wording did not finally clarify whether hotels, restaurants and bars would be affected. While determining that smoking would be prohibited in “public closed spaces”, the ban did not specify whether that would lead to a full-scale halt in offices, hotels and restaurants.

A public place is defined in the introduction to the law as “an area arranged for receiving the public or any specific group of people for whatever purpose”.

The Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority and Abu Dhabi Municipality both said they were awaiting clarification from federal authorities before enforcing the ban.

What is clear is that everything will soon become clearer. The Ministry of Health has established a national committee to combat tobacco to implement the federal legislation, said Dr Mahmoud Fikri, the head of health legislation and policies at the ministry.

“By next week we will share our plans on how we will enforce the law and when, and answer all questions pertaining to the tobacco ban,” he said.

The committee consists of representatives from the health, finance and trade ministries, the health authorities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and representatives from the transportation industry and the police. Municipalities and the Emirates Standardisation and Metrological Association will also be involved.

“All of us will work together to analyse the finer details of the law and the implementation of its various articles,” Dr Fikri said.

Later additions to the law should clarify the finer points regarding which establishments may allow their patrons to smoke. A copy of the law passed by the Federal National Council in February last year and obtained by The National stated that the specific places where smoking is not allowed “shall be named by the bill’s appendix”, which has not yet been published.

The details of the appendix will be added by the Ministry of Health within a month, the Al Ittihad newspaper reported yesterday.

While much remains to be clarified, not least of all how the law will be enforced and by whom, the law nevertheless makes a number of points clear:

• Smoking is prohibited in private vehicles in the presence of children under the age of 12.

• Tobacco products, including cigarettes packs, should contain a written statement and a picture that warn against smoking.

• Promotional materials that encourage smoking are banned.

• Cafes located in residential buildings or in residential areas will not be allowed to serve cigarettes or shisha.

• Individuals and companies who grow tobacco within the UAE, import candies and toys that resemble tobacco products or use equipment used for selling tobacco such as vending machines, could spend up to one year in prison or face a fine of as much as Dh1 million (US$272,250).

• Those who fail to print warning material on tobacco packages or publish promotional products that urge people to smoke can face a fine of as much as Dh1m.

• A ban on growing tobacco for commercial use is in place. Tobacco farms and factories have been given time to correct their situation.

Zaid al Siksek, the chief executive of Health Authority-Abu Dhabi, said “This is a major step and real breakthrough for tobacco control in the United Arab Emirates and will definitely contribute to reduce the substantial burden of disease and death due to smoking-related diseases, if the law will be carefully implemented and strictly enforced..

“A comprehensive ban on smoking in enclosed public places and indoor workplaces and public transport will now ensure that less people are exposed to the dangers of tobacco smoke. Also, the newly introduced comprehensive federal ban on sale of tobacco products to minors and banning pro-tobacco promotion, advertising and sponsorship are critically important measures to prevent specifically the youth from starting smoking.”

The only significant difference the law will bring to Dubai is the minimum age for buying tobacco products, which has dropped from 20 as recommended by Dubai Municipality to 18 as required by the federal law.

The Dubai municipal ban already regulated smoking in malls, hotels, restaurants, cafes and public areas. Dubai also banned businesses from selling cigarettes to those under 20 years of age in May 2008 and denied them access to areas designated for smokers. Hotels, motels, resorts and dormitories were also asked to designate special areas for smoking. Restaurants and cafes had to put clear sign separating smokers and non-smokers. Fines ranging from Dh1,000 to Dh10,000 were also slapped on offenders.

Salem Mesmar, the assistant director general of Dubai Municipality for health, safety and environment control, said: “When a federal law is issued, it is final. The entire country will follow it. If the federal law sets the age limit at 18 years, then we will follow it.

“We tried to keep the age limit for sale of cigarettes above 20 years. We thought that was better. Probably the Ministry of Health feels otherwise and have their reason for it.”

Dr Ali al Marzouqi, the director of the department of public health and safety at the Dubai Health Authority (DHA), said all public areas, including restaurants and hotels, should fall under the specifics of the new regulations.

“This is a federal law, so it supersedes all other laws that have been in place against smoking, including the ones implemented by the Dubai Heath Authority over the past few years,” he said. “The committee, together with all its stakeholders, will enforce this law and tell us how to proceed.

“We have found that 13 to 25 per cent of schoolchildren are smokers. Making it illegal to sell cigarettes to children below the age of 18, or making it illegal to smoke in cars with kids younger than 12 present, and stopping all the ads that make smoking attractive is a key step to preventing children from smoking.”

Raising the price of cigarettes in the UAE can be a second step to strengthen the effect of the law, he said.

In Sharjah, which introduced a strict public smoking ban in 2007 with fines ranging between Dh1,000 and Dh20,000, the emirate’s municipal council welcomed the changes yesterday at its weekly meeting.

Ahmad Turaym, the deputy head of the council, expressed concern that many youngsters had taken up smoking, which he said threatened the future of the country. He said about a quarter of the total smokers in the country were below the age of 18, although Sharjah Municipality said there were currently no age restrictions on the purchase of tobacco products in the emirate.

“The new legislation is an opportunity,” he said. “ We should use it to close all the avenues that youngster use to gain access to cigarettes or shisha.”

While officials work on clarifying the law begins, all the interested parties can do is wait.

“I really have no idea how the law would affect our businesses or the tobacco business in general,” said Younis Afandi of Iran, the owner of the Youssef Reda tobacco shop in Abu Dhabi.

newsdesk@thenational.ae
* With additional reporting by Yasin Kakande, Mahmoud Habboush, Hala Khalaf, Hassan Hassan, Anna Zacharias and Praveen Menon