Thursday, December 21, 2000 Older Editions

Smoked out in Andover?

By Adam Groff

The Board of Health is considering a Town Meeting article that would ban smoking in restaurants and bars, the only remaining public places in which people still can smoke.

Its considerations will be influenced in part by data from an Andover survey, recently completed by the Healthy Communities Tobacco Awareness Program, that shows community support for such a measure.

The ban would extend the effects of a strict 1994 smoking bylaw approved at Town Meeting.

Currently, only four mixed bar-and-restaurant establishments in town with variances to the 1994 bylaw allowing smoking in bar sections, and the one bar-only establishment in town, the Park Street Pub, is exempt from the bylaw.

According to Health Director Everett Penney, the new regulations would eliminate all smoking in those places, and it would also remove the two cigarette machines in town, one at the Park Street Pub and one at Grill 93 on River Road. In addition, the regulation would establish a local license for tobacco sales, and increase the penalties for sale of tobacco to minors.

"This is just a further refinement of our existing tobacco bylaw," said Penney. "It's an attempt to plug some holes."

Diane Pickles, director of the Healthy Communities program, which is based in Andover and represents five other surrounding communities, said the Healthy Communities survey was sent out earlier this year to a randomized 10 percent of registered voters in Andover. There was about a 35 percent response rate, or 740 responses. Overall, just under 78 percent of respondents said they would prefer regulation making restaurants in Andover 100 percent smoke-free. Almost 20 percent said they would prefer separate but enclosed smoking areas, and only 2.6 percent said they would prefer smoking throughout restaurants.

But the opinion of patrons at Justin's of Andover and the Park Street Pub was more evenly divided, or even skewed away from the idea of regulation.

"I agree that smoking is bad," said bartender Bob Riordan of Justin's of Andover. "But there are nonsmoking bars in Andover people can go to. Nonsmokers know this is a smoking bar, and they don't have to come here. It's not like a convenience store or a supermarket, where people have to come in. People don't have to come in here."

Ann Schuft, who was enjoying a hamburger at Justin's, had a different opinion. She said she recently moved to Andover from Acton, which enacted a townwide smoking ban similar to the one proposed in Andover. "We're friends with a pub owner in Acton," she said, "and he was terrified that business would be hurt. But business actually got better, because people came in that wouldn't have otherwise. It's hard to have to decide where you're going to go because of air quality."

"I'd say 50 percent of my customers only smoke when they're drinking," said Riordan. "They come here so they can do that. I don't know why the town has to tell the owners how to run their businesses."