Eight restaurants send no-smoke signals

Art Nadler

Monday, July 12, 1999 | 9:45 a.m.

Eight restaurants in Southern Nevada are about to see if taking a bite out of smoking will take a bite out of their business.

The Clark County Health District asked 300 restaurants to ban smoking for a weekend as part of its "Take a Bite Out of Smoking" event. Eight agreed to do so on Saturday and Sunday.

The eateries that will be smoke-free are the Country Inn restaurants, Harbor Palace Seafood Restaurant, Dragon Sushi, Mar Y Tierra Seafood Mexican Restaurant, Panini on South Rainbow Boulevard, The Egg & I and two Ricardo's on East Tropicana Avenue and West Flamingo Road.

"This is just an awareness campaign. We don't want to change attitudes," Carla Freeman, a health educator with the county, said. "Ultimately, we want restaurants to see that this is a benefit to their employees and their patrons."

The restaurants will display table cards, place mats and posters depicting children saying no-smoking slogans such as, "When I eat at a restaurant, I'd rather blow bubbles than smoke" and "When we go out to eat, I love playing in smoke-rings with my little brother."

Bob Ansara, owner of Ricardo's, said he decided to participate to see if patrons would support a completely smoke-free restaurant. Ricardo's inside the MGM Grand hotel-casino isn't participating, he said.

"It would be real hard to do this in a gambling environment, especially with an international clientele," Ansara said. "People from Latin America, Asia and Europe enjoy smoking."

Even though the bars inside the Ricardo's on Flamingo Road and Tropicana Avenue will be smoke free this weekend, Ansara said he isn't sure that customers will frequent a bar that doesn't allow smoking.

Scott Lee, general manager of the Country Inn restaurants, was more confident of the possibility of success at his establishments. "We have a lot more nonsmokers than smokers," he said. "Less than 25 percent of our customers are smokers."

If all the restaurants in Clark County were smoke free, Lee said, he thinks it would be accepted by the public.

Dr. Mary Guinn, the state Health Division officer, agrees. She said restrictions in public places have an effect on non-smokers' behavior because they begin patronizing only restaurants where there is no smoking.

As the nonsmoking community grows, she said, it will become less tolerant of smokers. Eventually, the entire community develops a smoke-free preference, she said.

Guinn said a 1997 Behavior Risk Factor survey conducted by all the states showed that Nevada ranked fourth in the nation for percentage of smokers. Kentucky was first, Indiana second and Ohio third.

The survey showed that lung cancer deaths in Nevada increased from 46.4 per 100,000 people in 1991 to 78 per 100,000 population in 1997. It also revealed that 30 percent of women and 28 percent of youths smoke in Nevada. The national average is 28.2 percent, she said.

Guinn said more than 7,000 Nevadans have died of lung cancer from 1991 to 1997.

"In the rest of the country, lung cancer is going down, but we are going up," Guinn said.

Statistics have also shown that non-smokers are at risk of dying from exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. The Environmental Protection Agency reported in 1997 that second-hand smoke contributed to 3,000 lung cancer deaths, a suspected 35,000 to 62,000 deaths because of heart disease and possibly 1,900 to 2,700 infant death syndrome deaths.