Ticketing smokers

So this 105-pound Southern Nevada Health District clerk walks into a bar and tells a tired, 265-pound, tattooed construction worker, ‘You can’t smoke in here. I’m citing you. That’ll cost you $100 …’ “

It’s not a joke. The Southern Nevada Health District is preparing to turn office staff into the Puff Patrol, a crack law enforcement squad charged with sniffing out violators of the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act. The new law, approved by voters in November, prohibits smoking inside most businesses, including bars that serve food.

Because a Clark County district judge in December struck down the law’s criminal penalties, the health district is the act’s sole enforcing agency. Right now, the district does little beyond taking complaints from customers about businesses that unlawfully allow smoking on their premises, then dispatching inspectors accordingly.

But the district’s lawyers are dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on a plan to cite individual smokers, which would assess a $100 fine and put citizens before a justice of the peace if they want to contest the ticket.

Which takes us back to our opening line.

“We are not peace officers, yet we’re in a bar and people are drinking,” said health district attorney Stephen Minagil. “The health district staff writing these citations are scientists. They are environmental health specialists who are not armed. They don’t have peace officer training.”

Without intending to do so, Mr. Minagil points out exactly why the health district has no business pursuing such a policy. If an individual smoker refuses to provide his identification, the health district officer’s only recourse is to call police for assistance. And local cops don’t have the manpower to uphold traffic laws in the valley, let alone respond to some bureaucrat’s complaint that the guy two tables down is lighting up and won’t put his cigarette out.

In fact, Las Vegas police brass have made it abundantly clear that they have no intention of upholding the Clean Indoor Air Act. They’ll provide backup to health district ticket writers only if the confrontation, initiated by the government employee, precipitates assault or battery — or worse.

In April 2003, two weeks after New York City’s own anti-smoking ordinance went into effect, a bouncer at a Manhattan bar was stabbed to death after he asked two patrons to extinguish their cigarettes.

Workers’ personal safety concerns will inevitably lead to another problem for the health district: selective enforcement.

Who is the aforementioned 105-pound “scientist” more likely to ticket, the 65-year-old woman with the oxygen tank or the beefy, 32-year-old ironworker? And where and when, exactly, will the Puff Patrol take to the streets? Will they hit upscale taverns in Summerlin or Green Valley during Thursday lunch, or biker bars on Boulder Highway at 2 a.m. Saturday?

If health district workers plan to continue working their convenient day shifts, the answers are easy — and unconstitutional.

Already, the health district has shown a deficiency of common sense in upholding the Clean Indoor Air Act.

Although the operators of Irene’s Lounge, at 5480 W. Spring Mountain Road, constructed a wall separating its nonsmoking dining area from the bar to keep their kitchen open and comply with the law, inspectors dinged lounge employees for taking food orders in the bar and serving meals to bar patrons. Mr. Minagil won’t drop the health district’s civil lawsuit against Irene’s Lounge until he’s satisfied that employees are forcing bar patrons to enter the dining area, order their food, then bring it back to the bar themselves.

Now that’s a joke. The Clean Indoor Air Act was pitched to voters primarily as protection for “the children.” But children aren’t allowed in bars. What difference does it make if workers serve food in walled-off smoking areas where children aren’t present? This kind of enforcement isn’t about “the children,” nor is it about preventing exposure to secondhand smoke. This is vindictive prohibition, plain and simple.

Considering how reliant local and state governments are on jacked-up cigarette taxes, that’s bad public policy.

So how should the Southern Nevada health district fairly uphold a voter-approved statute? It’s simple. Focus on the voters’ intent and concentrate their enforcement efforts on places where “the children” could be exposed to secondhand smoke. Investigate citizen complaints and cite businesses only if aggrieved parties can be identified and demonstrate harm.

Citing individual smokers is a terrible idea that will further clog overburdened courts, cost government more than it can recover in fines and provoke citizen backlash. The Southern Nevada Health District should put a match to this policy — somewhere smoke is allowed, of course.