It was a mysterious disappearance that had a tragic ending.
At 3:00 am on October 12, 2002 Eduardo Sanchez disappeared. The popular, 21-year-old DJ at a Winnipeg nightclub finished his shift. Customers and other staff members went home. Eduardo vanished.
The police were flummoxed. Eduardo had no known enemies. He was not engaged in the drug trade or dating the wrong person. The abrupt disappearance seemed like it had to be the result foul play, but there was no evidence and nobody had any motive.
Eleven months later, the City of Winnipeg passed a by-law banning smoking in restaurants, bars, bingo halls, casinos, and other such locations. This solved the mystery of Eduardo’s disappearance.
Shortly after the no-smoking by-law was passed, people began to complain about a horrible smell emanating from the nightclub. An investigation into the source of the smell revealed a small space between the stone foundation and a newer wall. For reasons known only to Eduardo, he crawled into the space, got stuck, and died of what the coroner described as “positional asphyxiation”.
It is a tragic story, but it does highlight one fact.
In the good old days, things like restaurants and bars stunk. A lot. Enough to mask the smell of decaying human flesh for almost a year.
Smoke filled spaces
Back in the good old days, smokers smoked pretty much everywhere. Indoor air was blue. If you went to a restaurant, you came home with stinky clothes. Bars were worse. Bingo halls were the worst. It would get so bad that even the smokers would complain about it.
In the 1980s, some restaurants and bars designated specific areas as “no smoking” sections. Some municipalities legislated their existence.
But let’s be honest.
Having a no-smoking section in a restaurant was about as effective as having a no-peeing section of a swimming pool.
A lot of smokers were militant about their right to smoke, where-ever and whenever they felt like. A few – a very few – would ask, “do you mind of I smoke?” Most would just light up and puff. “Smokers’ rights” seemed well entrenched. In the late 1980s, I was working for a Member of the Saskatchewan Legislature, Peter Prebble. He introduced a Private Member’s Bill to ban smoking in restaurants. It was laughed out of the Legislature. I got to field a lot of hostile phone calls by outraged smokers.
Then, a little over a decade later, things suddenly changed.
Vancouver led the way – sort of. In the spring of 1996, Vancouver city council banned smoking from restaurants into which children were admitted. This left bars and bingo halls alone. Restaurants were forced to choose between smokers and children. Most made a business decision based on the nature of their clientele. A few months later, Victoria city council passed a bylaw stipulating that restaurants had to reserve 60 percent of their seating capacity as a non-smoking section – and – more significantly, stipulated that they had to be 100 percent smoke free by 1999.
With that, the pend-up demand for clean air in restaurants and bars broke through. Municipalities began to pass laws banning smoking in these locations. The big break came in July 1996 when Toronto banned smoking in restaurants and bars effective January 1, 1997. The backlash was intense. Three days after the bylaw was passed (and six months before it took effect), Toronto Mayor Barbara Hall capitulated and asked council to allow designated smoking areas of up to 25 percent of seating capacity as long as there was a separate ventilation system. This caused owners of small restaurants and bars to rebel. A partial ban would give big operations a competitive advantage since small places had neither the space nor the capital to provide separately ventilated smoking areas. Toronto’s city council rejected Mayor Hall’s “compromise.” Diners and drinkers had to butt out on New Year’s Day as planned. Most stood on the sidewalk shivering in the cold. It was -13.8° Celsius as people finished singing Auld Lang Syne.
Oh. And it snowed.
Toronto smokers shivered and cursed. Most non-smokers celebrated.
With that, the dominos tumbled. One by one, municipalities imposed bans. As we saw earlier, Winnipeg banned smoking in restaurants and bars in 2003. An alert entrepreneur responded by opening a restaurant on Main Street – about 30 meters beyond city limits in the RM of West St. Paul. Business boomed and the air was blue. The dangers of having a business strategy based on exploiting gaps in regulation was exposed on October 1, 2004 when the Manitoba government became the second in Canada (after P.E.I.) to impose a province-wide ban on smoking in restaurants and bars.
By 2007, Alberta was the last place in Canada to allow smoking indoors in public places. This ended on January 1, 2008; eleven years to the day after Toronto told people to butt out in restaurants, Alberta smokers were also forced outdoors. The days of blue air and stinky clothes were over. There was some ongoing skirmishing over patios and specialty cigar shops, but the main battle was over.
As a lifetime non-smoker, I’m going to show my bias. I think this is better than in the good old days.
What caused the ban on smoking in restaurants?
In a word, numbers.
If we go back to the 1960s, about half of all Canadians over the age of 15 were regular smokers. Through a combination of intensive public education on the health effects of smoking and constant increases in tobacco taxes, the number of smokers began to drop in the early 1970s.
By the time Peter Prebble introduced his Private Member’s Bill in the Saskatchewan legislature, smokers were down to just under 40 percent of adult Canadians. Even though smokers were now in the minority, they were more passionate about the issue than were most non-smokers. Prebble was on the right track, but he was ahead of his time. The tipping point had not yet been reached.
When Toronto imposed the blanket ban on smoking inside bars and restaurants, only 25 percent of adult Canadians smoked. Non-smokers outnumbered smokers by a 3 to 1 ratio. This was enough to overcome intensity of commitment. By the time Alberta imposed its province-wide band, smokers were down to about 15 percent of the population. It’s now down to less than 10 percent. Unless there is a weird resurgence in smoking tobacco (which would likely require eliminating taxes on tobacco), I don’t see any possibility of Canada going back to smokey, stinky restaurants. The remaining ten percent of smokers, no matter how die-hard, are not going to regain the right to smoke wherever they please.
We can now go eat in a restaurant or drink in a bar without leaving with stinky clothes and red eyes. It’s better than in the good old days.