Tom Whitehurst

Sunday, October 29, 2000

In 1991, feminist author Susan Faludi's book "Backlash" provided a lesson in how perceptions become accepted as fact.
   In 1986, wire services picked up on a study claiming that if women didn't marry young, chances were bleak that they ever would. Newsweek went as far as to say a 40-year-old woman had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married.
   Problem was, the study was faulty, easily debunked by census figures. But as Faludi documented, the study's faults received scant attention and the public accepted its false conclusions as fact.
   Studies support both sides
   This lesson is important to consider as a campaign to ban smoking in Corpus Christi restaurants moves forward. Upon the first news report of this effort, a restaurant manager was quoted saying that studies have shown that smoking bans hurt business.
   Indeed they have. Studies also have shown the opposite.
   The studies that show it's bad for business were done by the restaurant and tobacco industries, often by the tobacco industry using the restaurant industry as a front.
   Ban in California
   Perhaps the most influential studies that show otherwise were done by a California professor, who has found that neither tourism nor restaurant business has been harmed by, and indeed may have benefited from, smoking bans.
   The professor, Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine, lobbied for his state's ban on smoking in bars. The credibility of his studies has been attacked by the tobacco industry. So, why believe this non-fire-breathing zealot?
   "The short answer to that is I'm a full professor of medicine at one of the major medical universities of the world and I didn't get here by being a militant anti-smoker," Glantz says. "I got here by being right. Publishing a trumped study like these guys accuse me of doing would basically destroy my career."
   It also would harm the reputations of the journals that published his studies, the American Journal of Public Health and the Journal of the American Medical Association. That's why they have something called peer review.
   Experts took his studies apart and tried to poke holes in them before they were published. If they had found holes, the studies wouldn't have been published.
   "If you contrast this with these so-called studies that contradict what we've said, none of them go through peer review. What most of these so-called studies are, are surveys.
   "We've got objective data on what actually happened. We didn't ask people what they thought about what would happen. So, it's unbiased."
   That objective data consists mainly of hotel revenues and sales tax revenues from restaurants and bars in cities that banned smoking.
   Claim widely accepted
   Glantz's evidence to the contrary, the tobacco industry succeeded in convincing restaurant owners that smoking bans hurt their business. He first was lured into studying the question in the 1980s, when a tobacco industry-backed restaurant group in Beverly Hills claimed a 30 percent loss of business because of a ban. "At the time, 25 percent of the California population smoked and it was hard to believe that nonsmokers weren't going to restaurants because they couldn't breathe second-hand smoke."
   But like the faulty report about older women's marriage prospects, the claim went unchallenged and became widely accepted. Beverly Hills backed off the ban four months later and allowed smoking sections in 40 percent of seating.
   Fighting 'on principle'
   None of this is to say that Corpus Christi should ban all smoking in restaurants. But if the City Council chooses not to do so, perhaps it should base its decision on some issue other than economics.
   Dee Haven, director of public affairs for the Coastal Bend Restaurant Association, offers two non-economic arguments against the ban.
   One is that he doesn't really think it's a health issue because there's not that much smoke in local restaurants, many of which are voluntarily smoke free and the rest of which are required to reserve 75 percent of their seats for nonsmokers. If he really wants to press this issue with health authorities, good luck.
   The other argument is that it infringes upon the business owners' rights.
   "We as a business organization will fight it to the end on principle," Haven said. "That's an issue that should be decided by the business owner and not by government."
   'Right of the owner'
   That argument has some resonance even with nonsmokers. Bill Baish, a nonsmoker who ran back-to-back legs of the Beach to Bay Relay Marathon last May when a team member failed to show, has worked in the restaurant industry off and on since 1980, holding jobs from busboy to manager. He'd prefer not to be around smoke, and he doesn't think a ban would cut into restaurant revenues.
   "I'd be real surprised if the restaurant business in Corpus Christi were affected by that."
   But if it were up to him?
   "I still would have to side with the right of the owner. If I were the owner of a business, I certainly would not want the government telling me I can't."
   Sides are lining up
   The restaurant association has persuaded the Coastal Bend Hotel Motel Condominium Association to pass a resolution in opposition to a ban. And when Haven visited the Corpus Christi Convention and Visitors Bureau board earlier this month asking for a resolution, the sentiment among those present was heavily in favor of giving him one. The CVB board will vote on the issue at its next meeting.
   The local chapter of the American Cancer Society, meanwhile, has formed a coalition, has counted about 250 smoke-free local food establishments and says two council members are willing to introduce an ordinance.
   Expect a fight.
  
  

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