Officials don't anticipate enforcement problems
W. DALE NELSON Star-Tribune correspondent | Posted: Tuesday, April 5, 2005 12:00 am
LARAMIE - Sitting at a darkened bar with his cigarette lighter holding down a stack of dollar bills in front of him, Jack Cook said he didn't think it was the City Council's business whether he smokes while he's drinking.
But he will obey a new city ordinance and go outside to light up.
"It is the law, and I'm a pretty law-abiding person," Cook said.
As he was speaking in the pub section of Reed's Package Liquors, a judge less than a block away was clearing the way for the ordinance to go into effect Wednesday.
In a decision filed with the court clerk's office in the Albany County Courthouse, 2nd District Judge Jeffrey Donnell declined to postpone the effective date of the measure until after a trial next month testing the validity of the Nov. 2 city election that cleared the way for it.
The Laramie ordinance is the first in Wyoming. It will prohibit smoking in enclosed areas of public places and workplaces, including bars and restaurants.
Cook, a carpenter, said he is a regular customer at Reed's, and he had come there Monday to measure a space outside for a platform to which he and other customers will be able to go when they want a smoke.
Jade Miller, proprietor of Reed's and a leader of opposition to the smoke control ordinance, said he would ask customers not to smoke inside, but "I am not in the mind to throw out a good customer because he refuses to not smoke. That would be cutting my throat."
At the police station, Cmdr. Dale Stalder, the department's spokesman, said, "It is our intent to respond to any complaint that we receive from people who see anybody smoking."
Stalder said that based on the experiences of other cities in the Rocky Mountain region that have adopted similar ordinances, it is likely that "we won't have a lot of calls about it."
"Our officers will be responding to any calls or complaints on the ordinance, and it will be up to them what action they take," he said.
Larry Deal, leader of Laramie's Clean Indoor Air Coalition, said, "We will work to educate people. We are not going to be out looking for people to report. We are hoping there will be no citations."
In the first year after Fort Collins, Colo., adopted a similar ordinance, he said, there were only two.
Stalder said that although the police department has authority to issue citations, the city is looking into having the city attorney take over enforcement by filing complaints instead. He said the interpretation of a section of the ordinance banning smoking within "a reasonable distance" of an entrance to an affected establishment is also under discussion.
At the Reed's pub, Cook and Al Snyder, a Laramie resident now working as caretaker at a rest stop on Interstate 80 near Arlington, were interviewed as they visited over a couple of beers.
Snyder, like his companion, said he would comply with the law, although he didn't agree with arguments that their smoking would be harmful to others' health.
Jade Miller said, "People who go to bars aren't really going to call the police because somebody is smoking."
Star-Tribune correspondent W. Dale Nelson can be reached at wdnelson@bresnan.net.