Rep. Brenda Landwehr would like to repeal the new law that restricts smoking in public places across the state.
But the Wichita Republican who chairs the House Health and Human Services Committee said she doesn’t think she can muster the votes to take the popular law off the books.
“As much as I’d like to see it, I doubt very seriously if (a repeal bill) will be put out there,” Landwehr said in a recent interview. “I don’t think it would have a chance to pass.”
On that, Landwehr and supporters of the law agree.
Jake Lowen, a strategist with Clean Air Kansas, said coalition lobbyists don’t believe that opponents of the law have enough votes in the Senate to repeal it.
“We fully anticipate that as we go through the session this year, we will continue to hold onto this law,” Lowen said.
Supporters of the law, which took effect in July, also believe they have enough votes to block efforts to substantially alter it, Lowen said.
“Any efforts to weaken it will not succeed,” he predicted.
Even so, Landwehr sees room to maneuver.
“I think there is room for compromise,” she said.
Hearings scheduled Wednesday
A compromise, as Landwehr sees it, could involve making one of two seemingly incompatible changes to the law. One bill, scheduled for a hearing Wednesday in her committee, would close an exemption to the statewide smoking ban in public places. Another would create a new one.
House Bill 2039 would repeal an exemption that allows people to smoke in state-owned casinos. HB 2340 would add bars authorized to sell Kansas Lottery tickets to the list of businesses exempted from the ban.
Landwehr has long maintained that if second-hand smoke is a health hazard — which research shows it is — then people in casinos shouldn’t be exposed to it. If on the other hand, exemptions are deemed necessary for economic reasons, Landwehr said she and several other House members believe that consideration should be given to excusing other businesses that serve adult clientele.
“We’re about citizens’ rights and businesses’ rights to be able to do what they want to with their businesses when they’re dealing with a legal substance. And that’s exactly what tobacco products are,” she said.
Poll suggests otherwise
A statewide poll conducted in January by a Republican firm hired by organizations that support the ban not only showed strong support for the law, it indicated that 75 percent of Kansans put the rights of customers and employees to breathe clean air above the rights of smokers to indulge and business owners to allow smoking in their establishments.
Glen Bolger, co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, the firm that did the survey, said the 77 percent of respondents who said they supported the law included Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Kansans who identified with the Tea Party.
“When you look at these data, it’s clear that Kansans like this law,” Bolger said.
Also, 59 percent of those polled said they would be less likely to vote for candidates who favored repeal of the law.
Ban affecting lottery revenues
New information about the smoking ban’s potential effect on Kansas Lottery revenues could factor into the discussion on the bill that would exempt bars where lottery tickets are sold and online games played.
Since setting a record of nearly $240 million in 2007, lottery revenues have declined in two of the last three years, taking their biggest plunge in the 2009 budget year when they dipped to about $230 million. They rebounded in the 2010 budget year, climbing to a little more than $235 million.
But Kansas Budget Director Steven Anderson said recently that sales could approach the record levels they reached in 2007 if the bill is passed allowing smoking in bars where lottery games are played.
“In addition, passage of the bill could encourage more bars to begin selling lottery tickets, which would allow them to reinstitute smoking,” Anderson said in a March 7, 2011 memo to Landwehr (PDF).
Ed Van Petten, executive director of the Kansas Lottery, said while its clear that the smoking ban has affected revenues, it’s hard to separate the impact from that of the recession.
“It’s more anecdotal than anything,” Van Petten said. “We didn’t do an in-depth study.”
Van Petten said online games such as Keno, which is played on special monitors in bars and convenience stores, have been affected the most by the smoke-free law. Keno’s sales have dropped more than 12 percent in the past year, he said.
Despite its impact on revenues, Van Petten says he supports the smoking ban and that the Kansas Lottery isn’t lobbying for its repeal or for the bill to exempt bars.
Lottery officials said they had no way to estimate how many more bars would apply to be authorized retailers should the exemption bill pass. Currently, the lottery has 1,800 retailers. Most of them are convenience stores, 72 are fraternal organizations and 139 of them are bars.
Unaffected by the ban
One of the top-selling lottery vendors in the state is Speck’s Bar & Grill in Topeka. Owner Debbie Maichel said she has several lottery players who have played daily for years — and they smoke. She said at first, the smoking ban did seem to diminish their lottery playing a little, but after a few months they were playing as much as ever.
“Right after the smoking ban a lot of my regulars would come in and play everything all at once and then leave,” Maichel said. “But now they’ve gotten used to the smoking ban, now they stay hours at a time.”
Maichel said smokers now go outside occasionally. There’s a lottery screen facing out the window to the smoking porch, which she said was popular.
She said Keno and overall lottery sales — as well as overall bar sales — are “more or less the same” as they were before the ban. As an ex-smoker of 16 years, Maichel said “I love the ban. It’s so much easier to keep things clean.”
Even still, if the law allowed her to permit smoking at Speck’s, she said she would.
“Absolutely. I don’t think it’s fair that casinos can have smoking and we can’t. I would definitely let people smoke again,” she said.