SMOKING IS ON THE ROCKS

IT was a widely held opinion one year ago that banning smoking in bars was
a waste of time. Such a ban would be impossible to enforce, critics said.
Bartenders would never force people to have their beer without a cigarette.

Yet the first year of California's ban has been a qualified success. While
a small, vocal group of bar owners and patrons openly defies the law, most
bars are smoke-free.

Statewide estimates of compliance range from 68 percent for stand-alone
bars to 90 percent for combination bar-restaurants. Not perfect, but not
bad for a law that was supposed to be unenforceable.

Rates of compliance vary across the state. In Santa Clara County, home to
some of the first anti-smoking ordinances in California, enforcement has
been spotty. This is in part because various cities have assigned different
to agencies -- from the fire department to the vice squad -- the
responsibility for citing smokers and bar owners who don't comply. That's
confusing.

Larger cities such as San Jose and San Francisco have been less successful
than smaller cities, in part because they have more serious crimes to solve.

In the coming year, we expect compliance rates to go up. Polls show that
most bar patrons approve of the ban, and eventually they will pressure
owners to crack down on smokers. Also, we expect cities will figure out
better ways to enforce the law. In San Jose, for example, the local smoking
ordinance was changed recently so that landlords can be fined if bars
operating in their buildings break the law. Under state law, only bar
owners can be cited. Bar owners may be more likely to comply if they are
afraid of being evicted by angry landlords.

There will always be holdouts, bars that cater to a smoking clientele and
refuse to change. The law is fairly easy to ignore because of the way it's
written: A bartender merely has to post no-smoking signs and inform
customers of the smoking ban but doesn't have to actually kick them out if
they refuse to put out their cigarettes.

But the law doesn't have to put out every cigarette in every bar to be a
success. A year ago, it was nearly impossible for non-smokers to sit in a
bar or work in one without breathing cigarette smoke. Today, it's the
smokers who have to hunt for a place to light up. That's progress.