by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Sitting on a stool at a small bar on St-Laurent and Duluth, the owner looks around and starts counting.

“Those girls there are smoking, that couple is smoking, those five guys over there are smoking.” Anthony (who didn’t provide his last name, saying he doesn’t like to see it in the papers), owner of the Barfly, keeps counting: “Let’s see, 15, 16, 17, 18—every single person in this bar is smoking except me!” He’s a non-smoker.

As the proprietor of what is arguably one of the smokiest bars on the Main, Anthony is well aware of the province-wide smoking ban coming into force on May 31. For the Barfly, which makes a lot of its money from its smoking regulars, as well as for the thousands of other bars across Quebec, the new cleain-air policy will signal a momentous change. For the better, he thinks.

“At first I wasn’t real happy about it,” he says. “I think it’s gonna hurt business with the regulars during the day, but not so much at night. People are still going to come out.”

Anthony sounds like a lot of other bar owners the Mirror contacted over the last two weeks. From neighbourhood pubs to Crescent street complexes to high-end restaurants to strip bars, compliance and self-policing seem to be the orders of the day.

Money versus health

Not everyone is happy with the brave new smoke-free world. On Wednesday, March 29, Peter Sergakis, head of the newly-formed l’Union des tenanciers de bars du Québec (UTBQ), pitched some tents and camped outside Premier Jean Charest’s Montreal office at McGill College and Sherbrooke W. Sergakis, owner of a number of Montreal bars including the Sky Complex in the Gay Village, PJ’s and the Amazones strip bar on St-Jacques W. and Cabaret Les Caresses on Notre-Dame W., says the smoking ban is, in effect, a violation of civil rights. Along with his protest partner, Laval-based bar owner Voula Demopoulos, he is taking the ban to court and is represented by noted constitutional lawyer Julius Grey. Sergakis claims to have deposited a 10,000-name petition to the Premier and has had supporters send 1,000 letters to the government protesting the ban.

“We run private enterprises,” he says. “We’re not forcing non-smokers to come to our establishments. If you don’t want to come, don’t come.”

Sergakis believes the problem will fix itself, and doesn’t need government intervention. “Five to 10 per cent of bars are non-smoking already,” he says. “Let’s not dictate what to do—give us the choice to switch ourselves.”

Which is a good point. A number of smoking ban critics, such as U.S.-based journalists Christopher Hitchens (Slate.com, Vanity Fair) and Michael Musto (The Village Voice), decry what they consider encroaching paternalism. Municipalities in Wisconsin and New Hampshire have voted down smoking bans. And comprimises are possible: On Jan. 1, 2006, Spain enacted a smoking ban, although it was a watered-down version of the original proposal, following months of vigorous public debate. The freedom to choose your behaviour, the thinking goes, includes the freedom to choose what you put in your body.

If the government is so against the idea of smoking, Sergakis says, “Why don’t they declare it an illegal product?”

The government’s cut

Probably because the government makes a lot of money from tobacco sales. According to Arminda Mota, the Quebec spokeswoman for MyChoice.ca, a pro-smoking lobby group funded by the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers’ Council, the federal and provincial governments makes billions of dollars off tobacco taxes, far more than it pays out in terms of health care. In 2003, Quebec cigarette sales topped $8-billion, down from $13-billion in 1994.

“We’re talking about a lot of money here,” she says. She calls the ban “crazy.”

The money factor is what sticks in the craw of a lot of people who otherwise support the ban. Barfly owner Anthony says that for all the health benefits derived from a ban, there is something hypocritical about treating cash cows like smokers as pariahs. Nick Robinson, a “musician in semi-retirement” and manager of Korova on St-Laurent and Bagg, agrees.

“Initially I was against it,” he says. “I was sick of the government taking measures to curb individual rights rather than looking at societal problems. They’ll collect the taxes but won’t curb restrictions on sales.”

All the cool kids aren’t doing it

Maybe because it’s not necessarily needed. Smoking is on the decline in Quebec, with younger people especially abstaining. According to the province’s statistics from 2002–2003, the latest available, smokers account for about 25 per cent of all Quebecers aged 15 and over. The national average is around 20 per cent. In 1994, however, somewhere around 35 per cent of Quebecers smoked. Tobacco use among high school students has also dropped, from 30.4 per cent of students reporting having used some tobacco product in 1998 to 23.1 per cent in 2002. Girls, however, smoke more than boys: 26.2 per cent of high school girls reported using tobacco, compared to 20.1 per cent of boys.

But the overall decline in tobacco use is a trend that is carried into university and beyond, Robinson says, as non-smoking becomes the new normal. And Montrealers are going to be playing catch-up.

“If you go out with a bunch of native Montrealers, you’re not as aware of the effect of a smokey bar,” he says. “But these young Ontario kids did grow up with a ban and it’s become a standard law. A lot of the bar-going public comes from out of town where there are smoking bans, so they just don’t smoke as much.”

Anthony of Barfly agrees. His bar hosts music shows most nights during the week, and he says he feels for the musicians who have to belt out song after song while gulping down lungful after lungful of second-hand smoke (environmental tobacco smoke—ETS—in official-ese. The government says 359 people died in 1998 as a result of ETS exposure).

“A lot of people are fed up with smoking,” he says. “I get more complaints about the smoke than anything else. And on Fridays, when I get more of an under-25 crowd, the only smokers are the regulars who are sticking around for a show. Kids are smoking pot if they smoke anything at all.”

Robinson, 29, quit his 10-year habit three-and-a-half years ago. He says that most of his friends either already have or are planning to quit. “There’s a realization that it’s time for it to end.”

Lagging behind

Bill 112, as the ban is known, didn’t come out of the blue. It’s a follow-up to Quebec’s 1998 Tobacco Act, which first placed limits on smoking in the workplace and called for a new report and recommendations by October 2005. It’s a rare instance of the government checking in before the deadline, and none too soon, says François Damphousse, the director of the Quebec office for the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association (NSRA), a lobby group funded by three levels of government. The NSRA did have their input and filed briefs while the government was consulting the public on Bill 112.

“I knew with time that the law would change because this is a trend that’s going crazy across North America,” he says. “It’s a fundamental right for employees to be able to work in a healthy environment.” Smoking, he says, is “a privilege, not a right.”

Looking at other cities is a good indicator of how the ban will affect Montreal. All of Canada’s provinces and territories have some kind of ban in place, although with differing levels of enforcement and reach (you can smoke in an enclosed patio in Toronto, for instance, but not in Montreal after May 31). In British Columbia, a new ban is coming into effect this June, replacing the existing one that was reportedly difficult to enforce, especially in the province’s interior. It’s something that worries Montreal city councillor (and ex-smoker) Marvin Rotrand.

“Not everyone touched by the law knows about it,” he says. “It’s not very well publicized. And no one has thought about the enforcement mechanism.”

The ban will be enforced by 35 health inspectors province-wide, a number that Rotrand says is far too low to be effective. While each borough on the island of Montreal can name their own inspectors, Rotrand says it’s up to the province to pay for them. “We don’t think we should pay for what is essentially a provincial mandate,” he says.

Rotrand couldn’t say how many inspectors, or how many dollars, are needed, but he says he has been in touch with other municipalities to pressure the province to cough up the money.

Bar life still alive

One of the noteworthy aspects of Bill 112 is its extensive coverage. Smokers in some other cities, such as New York, have been able to circumvent the ban in some instances, such as frequenting bars that allow clandestine smoking after 3 a.m. or hanging out at establishments not covered by the ban. But New Yorkers are now used to the fact that smoking is on the outs.

“I usually go to a hookah place down the street once a week,” says transplanted Montreal musician JF Robitaille, 30, now living in Brooklyn. An unreformed smoker, Robitaille, a friend of the Korova’s Robinson, says he used to frequent smokeasies—bars that allow smoking. Hearing about them through word of mouth, he says he’s been to “three or four” in his year in New York, “which were always packed with smokers.” He goes less now, having become accustomed to standing outside non-smoking bars.

Most bar owners contacted by the Mirror for this article don’t seem too worried about the economic effect the ban will have on their business. Based on previous bans, most owners can expect a 15 to 20 per cent dip in business in the first few months following a ban, but it usually turns itself around. The Barfly’s Anthony doesn’t think it will have much effect in the long run, and Robinson says business might even pick up as non-smokers won’t have problems with going out to clubs.

Which is well and good for owners of bars on St-Laurent, Ste-Catherine, St-Denis and Mont-Royal, but what about bars in residential streets, like Else’s, on the corner of Roy and de Bullion? Gaggles of smokers huddled outside a bar across the street from housing units will present some problems for establishments like that, Anthony says.

“My worry is that [the ban] will ruin the vibe,” Robinson says. “It’s going to have a negative effect on what we think a bar should be. Something definitely will be lost.”

But neither Anthony nor Robinson are involved in the Sergakis suit. Neither have been invited to join, and Robinson at least doesn’t think it’s worth his time anyway.

“The kids today are going to grow up not knowing what a smoking bar is, so what’s the fucking point?”