INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana’s new statewide smoke-free law exempts bars from the smoking ban, but anyone who lights up inside a bar at a bowling alley will be violating the law.
Meanwhile, the new law bans smoking in restaurants, but patrons of restaurants on casino properties can light up all they want.
And while the new law carries a penalty for smoking in a smoke-free zone, it created no new funding to enforce the law.
Indiana lawmakers wrangled for years over a statewide smoking ban before finally passing a piece of legislation laden with exemptions and laced with some holes.
Now it’s up to other people to figure out how to enforce it.
“The problem with this smoking ban bill is that it’s like having a peeing section in a pool,” said Rep. Peggy Welch, a co-author of the original bill that was tougher. “It just doesn’t work.”
Welch, a Bloomington Democrat, joins a chorus of critics who say the law is flawed.
Some are public-health advocates who don’t like the carve-outs for casinos, bars and private clubs because workers at those establishments won’t be protected from second-hand smoke. Other critics say it’s unfair to the businesses not exempted. And some just say it’s confusing.
An example: The new law has an exemption for bars. But when the law goes into effect July 1, Jerry Hindel will be required to ban smoking in the bar adjacent to his no-smoking bowling alley in Indianapolis.
“So my customers can’t smoke, but they can go across the street to a tavern and smoke,” said Hindel, who handles legislative issues for the Indiana Bowling Centers Association. “It’s not a very level playing field as far as we’re concerned.”
There’s no mention of bowling-alley bars in the bill. But the bar exemption has its own exemptions, including one that excludes bars that are “located in a business that would otherwise be subject to this chapter.”
That’s why bars in bowling alleys, taverns with adjacent family rooms, and bars inside restaurants will have to go smoke-free.
The Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission is charged with enforcing the law. The commission staff is working out details of how they’ll do that. They’ll be posting frequently asked questions, with answers, on the commission website before the July 1 start of the law.
They’re counting on some self-enforcement and hoping for more people like restaurant owner Allen Clark. He’s snuffing out smoking at the Lighthouse Restaurant & Lounge in Jeffersonville on April 1, two months before the law goes into effect.
Clark said the early prohibition is voluntary. “Even our smokers say it’s too smoky in here,” Clark said. “It’s time for a change.”
The new law requires “public places” like restaurants to prominently post signs that say “Smoking Is Prohibited By State Law.” It requires those restaurant owners — and anyone else in charge of a public gathering place — to “cause to be removed” anyone violating the smoking ban who refuses to quit when asked.
Those rules don’t apply to dining venues at casino and racino properties in Indiana. The Indiana Gaming Industry successfully lobbied for language that not only exempts a “facility that operates under a gambling game license” but also any other adjacent “permanent structure on land owned or leased” by the casino owner.
What that means, says Alcohol and Tobacco Commission spokesman Travis Thickstun, is that “restaurants at casinos are exempt.”
The people who manage Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis thought the “smoking terraces” at their facility would be exempt from the law’s prohibition on smoking 8 feet from a public entrance.
Located on the club level of the fieldhouse where the Indiana Pacers play, the open-air terraces are frequented by smokers who don’t want to miss the game.
Greg Schenkel, a spokesman the fieldhouse management team, said he thought the 8-foot rule only applied to the fieldhouse’s street-level entrances. Not so; Thickstun said the law applies to those terrace doors as well. It’s up to fieldhouse management to enforce that. If they don’t, they’re violating the law.
It’s costly if you’re caught breaking the law. It’s a Class B infraction, with up to a $1,000 fine, for first-time offenders. Repeat offenders, with three unrelated violations, can face up to a $10,000 fine.
The ATC is still trying to figure out some enforcement issues. Indiana State Health Commissioner Gregory Larkin, who’s working with the ATC, has said there won’t be any “smoking police” sent out to enforce the law.
He said it will mostly be left up to citizens to report violations of the new smoking ban. The ATC is still figuring out how that reporting process will work, where those complaints will be directed, and how those complaints will be responded to. While the law requires the ATC to enforce the smoking ban, it only has 86 excise police officers on staff to cover 92 counties.
It’s not uncommon for states to struggle with their smoking bans. Illinois had to revise its smoking ban after the state found some prosecutors weren’t enforcing it. In Ohio, millions of dollars in fines levied on businesses that violated its smoking ban have gone unpaid. After Michigan passed its ban, it granted limited immunity to bowling alleys hit with “slip and fall” lawsuits from slippery shoed bowlers who slipped and fell when they stepped outside for a smoke.
The co-authors of the Indiana ban, including Welch, already have their sights on revamping the bill. “When we come back for the 2013 session, we’ll have a lot more answers to the questions that will arise as people start to implement the law,” Welch said. “It’s rare that we get things right the first time.”
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