No butts about it, smoking lamp’s out

Publication Date: 2007-04-30

• Author:Brian Powell & Garin Groff
• Publication:East Valley Tribune

Come Tuesday, practice will be over.

Bar patrons will have to light up outside their favorite watering holes across Arizona as the smoking ban at bars and restaurants begins. Voters approved the prohibition in November, forcing smokers to patios, and in places without outdoor seating like downtown Scottsdale’s Sugar Shack, smokers will have to inhale outside.

Runyan and other bartenders across the East Valley objected to the ban, but accepted it’s better than the patchwork of municipal restrictions that had been in place across the Valley. The new state law means bars in Tempe, where voters had previously banned smoking, will be on a level playing field with other state municipalities. Bartenders say the uniformity could keep smokers going to their favorite places because they won’t have any options.

“People are always going to go out to a bar,� said Allen Diamond, a bartender at the 33-year-old DJ’s on Stetson Drive in Scottsdale.