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Results of a study done at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia were released this week and indicate that people exposed to second-hand smoke for a significant period of time exhibit lung damage comparable to that of smokers. So if you live a healthy lifestyle, but work or frequent a place where people smoke, you could develop emphysema and/or lung cancer anyway. This is just one more to add to the pile of mounting evidence that smoking in common areas such as restaurants and bars is a health hazard.

Mt. Washington establishments are divided about where they stand on this issue and it’s evidenced by the business owners that have enacted non-smoking policies despite the state’s inability or unwillingness to pass Senate Bill 246. Interestingly enough, it seems to be a geographic divide. The only places I am aware of that have a non-smoking policy in this community are Bella Vista and Coal Hill Steakhouse. Restaurants and bars on Shiloh Street and Boggs and Bailey Avenues still allow smoking.

I think what bothers me the most are the places that rely primarily on food sales to subsist and allow smoking. It’s fairly typical to leave a bar reeking of smoke and waking up the next morning with a hacking cough, but I’m not prepared for this when I go somewhere to enjoy a meal. I went to one of our neighborhood restaurants for breakfast recently and found that there was nowhere to escape the poisonous gases hovering in the air. Is it legal to NOT have a non-smoking section? Perhaps worse, and what subsequently caused me to get up and leave without finishing my meal, was the smoking I saw going on in the kitchen. Sorry, but I didn’t order my pancakes with a side of ashes.

I’ve heard all of the arguments for smokers’ rights. Namely, how smoking bans stomp all over our privacy and property rights, that banning smoking will go the way of Prohibition, and that behaviors such as drinking put other people at risk too. I struggled with this issue because while I have always abhorred smoke, it makes me nervous to shift away from an individual rights-based country to one of majority rules. I can also see how forcing free-market establishments to operate in a certain way may set a precedent for future manipulation of civil liberties. I guess I just believe that a non-smoker’s right to breathe clean air trumps that of someone smoking (albeit legally) and potentially harming the non-smoker(s).

Lesser-known Mt. Washington restaurants and bars (mostly those not on “Restaurant Row”) face challenges and I can see how banning smoking could potentially hurt their bottom lines in the short-term. I wonder though if some of them were forward-thinking enough to create and promote an all non-smoking environment if they wouldn’t see an increase in sales over time. Losing a few customers could result in attracting a whole new, and very appreciative, clientele.

(Visit non-smoking dining.org for a list of non-smoking restaurants and bars in and around Pittsburgh).