Could San Francisco Ban Smoking on Bar Patios?

Bar patios are one of the few remaining places San Franciscans can legally smoke in public. But on Monday, a committee of city supervisors will consider eliminating the exception for patio smoking, and join over 50 other cities in the Bay Area with similar bans.

The proposal has sparked a heated debate between patrons and bar owners, who say their businesses are already hurting, and public health experts — who say anti-smoking laws have played a significant role in reducing tobacco consumption from 42% to less than 15% nationally, since the 1960s.

“ Rather than allowing or even encouraging this behavior, we should take every effort to try to educate the public, and to try to protect both the customers as well as the employees of these establishments,” Dr. John Maa, a surgeon at Chinese Hospital, said. “We want to reduce their risks of heart disease, of stroke, and of cancers.”

Maa is the former president of the San Francisco Marin Medical Society, which co-sponsored the proposal, along with major medical groups such as the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association.

Maa said the ban builds off of a 2014 city law, which prohibited outdoor smoking at restaurants, but granted an exception for bars and taverns with outdoor patios after pushback from bar owners.

That pushback has carried over into this fight: more than 2,000 small business owners and residents have signed an online petition opposing the ban.

“While we respect the Board’s concern for public health, we believe this legislation is misguided in its scope, timing, and priorities — and we urge the Board to reject it,” the petition reads.

Lex Montiel, who owns and operates the San Francisco Eagle, said he’s worried about the indirect impact the ordinance would have on business.

The Eagle is a historic leather bar in SoMa, with a large covered patio — an important draw for customers, many of whom enjoy cigars and cigarettes in the space, Montiel said.

Since COVID, the bar’s economic position has been tenuous, he said, and his clientele relies on the covered patio to provide them a space to dress freely and socialize with others in the community.

“If [a customer] is smoking and we have to push them out to the street on a jockstrap, we definitely would lose that customer,” he said. “We will not be able to offer a safe space.”

Montiel said the city is “overreaching” with the ban. While the health of his clientele and his employees is important to him, he said, he doubts that his employees are exposed to dangerous levels of secondhand smoke while at work. Montiel said that he hasn’t received complaints, and he is “very, very strict” about preventing smoking and vaping inside the bar.

Maa said Montiel’s claims, and other arguments against the ban, are based on misinformation. He pointed to decades of public health research, which shows that whenever someone smokes outside, others around them risk inhaling particles in concentrations that can increase the risk of disease.

He also said the tobacco industry has “targeted” the LGBTQ+ community and other minority groups in their marketing, and credited the San Francisco-based nonprofit LGBTQ Minus Tobacco for their contributions to “championing” the ban.

“It’s only a small incremental step forward — that over 400 cities in America have already done,” he said. “San Francisco is simply trying to catch up with the rest of the nation here.”

Though Maa said, it’s hard to evaluate whether changing the law will also change the behavior of existing smokers.

Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who wrote and sponsored the legislation, said she knows her proposal has been controversial.

“As with all things in San Francisco, everybody has an opinion,” she said. Some of the messages she’s received, however, have been “ very personal, very toxic” and, in some cases, threatening.

She told KQED that she empathizes with the concerns of both smokers and business owners, but nonetheless, “there’s no question” that “secondhand smoke causes cancer.”

The bill faces its first hurdle in front of the city’s Land Use and Transportation Committee on May 18. To pass, it must be approved by at least two members of the committee.