Editorial: Creating a smoke screen

Wednesday, May 2, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

In the latest attempt to overturn the statewide vote last year to ban smoking in restaurants and establishments that serve food, a tavern owner is trying to make smoking a First Amendment issue.

A neighborhood tavern in Las Vegas left ash trays on tables, which goes against the rules set by the Southern Nevada Health District to enforce the law. Health inspectors found people smoking in the bar and the owner was cited. The Health District says the bar owner was in "willful disobedience" and wants a District Court judge to fine the tavern's owner $200. The district also wants the judge to order the business to comply with state law.

Lawyer Robert Peccole told the Associated Press that the ash trays were purposely left out so "we could get a court test." He said the order to remove the ash trays violates the First Amendment because the ash trays have the tavern's name and address on the bottom of them and thus, he says, are a form of commercial free speech.

Ash trays are protected by the First Amendment? Using Peccole's logic, it would seem to figure that smoking should be banned anyway because the ashes from the cigarettes would cover the "free speech" on the bottom of the trays.

This is ridiculous. Instead of trying to find ways to challenge the law in court, tavern and bar owners should be doing what they can to comply with the law - as most of the businesses affected by the new law are. The fact is that the people of Nevada spoke in the election last fall, approving a reasonable anti-smoking law. Voters defeated a duplicitous measure backed by bar and tavern owners that, in the guise of an anti-smoking measure, actually would have rolled back smoking laws.

Still, some of the bar and tavern owners act as if they're being picked on and as if the voters' will is some sort of infringement on their rights, most ridiculously their First Amendment rights. They should accept this law much like any law they deal with regarding worker safety or public safety, such as the health laws that govern their kitchens.

Bar and tavern owners have a choice: They can ban smoking or they can close their kitchens. Whatever they do, they need to quit blowing smoke.