Smokeasy

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A smokeasy (also spelled smoke-easy or smokeeasy) is a business, especially a barroom, which allows smoking despite a legal prohibition. Finding a smokeasy can be difficult, since the illegal nature of the operation makes it difficult to promote. The word was added to the New Oxford American Dictionary in 2005, although it was used as early as 1978.

Background

Smoking bans have been described as a type of sumptuary law (laws which attempt to regulate habits of consumption), just like the prohibition of alcohol and drug prohibition. Such prohibitions tend to trigger underground economies. For, when a sector of the population is prohibited by law from consuming a certain good, or consuming a certain good in a certain way, inevitably some will flout that prohibition and provide the good or the means of consuming the good in a black market fashion. Thus, just as prohibition in the United States led to the speakeasy (establishments in which alcohol was sold in contravention of the law), so too have smoking bans led to the smokeasy..

Operations

Some smokeasy operators simply operate openly, figuring the fines they will collect is merely a cost of doing business. Others employ stealth tactics. For example, in Philadelphia, where it is illegal to have an ashtray in the workplace, smokeasy bartenders sometimes will use cups filled with some water to serve as ashtrays. A visit from the city inspector then merely requires getting customers to extinguish their smoking materials and disposing of the cigarette butts.

Because smokeasies are breaking the law, usually locations are spread by word-of-mouth; they even may involve the swearing of secrecy. Although some smokeasies are underground establishments, others are ordinary bars which in the evening covertly permit smoking.

Examples

New York City

Within one month of the passage of New York City's smoking ban in 2003, smokeasies were quickly predicted. Shortly thereafter, some bartenders began to hear word of smokeasies, and theorized that some former regulars who were smokers had switched to the smokeasies. Today, both covert and overt smokeasies exist throughout New York City and the whole state of New York. As a result, New York City unexpectedly has had to begin a campaign of enforcing its smoking ban: in 2005-2006, the city issued 601 citations to smokeasies, including 232 in Queens, 158 in Manhattan, 126 in Brooklyn, 73 in The Bronx and 12 in Staten Island.

Hawaii

In Hawaii, a large number of establishments openly defy the statewide smoking ban, one of America's strictest, which went into effect on November 16, 2006. Several bars even have reported their defiance to local newspapers and have invited television stations to film the unlawful smoking. As of 2008, no bar has been fined, and open defiance continues. Up to half of the bar owners in Honolulu have signed statements claiming losses averaging 30%, and expressed open concern at the anti-smoking lobby claim that it would not affect business. As a result, proposals currently are before the Hawaii Legislature to exempt bars from the statewide smoking ban by creating a new type of liquor license which permits the licensee to allow smoking in his or her bar.

Elsewhere

Smokeasies have become a noted phenomenon in most jurisdictions with a ban on smoking in bars and/or restaurants, including Alberta, Arizona, Boston, California, Colorado, Columbia, Missouri, Delaware, Dublin, Germany, Illinois, Manitoba, Minnesota, Ohio, Philadelphia, Qatar, Scotland, Seattle, Toronto, the United Kingdom, Utah, and Washington, D.C..

References

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Last updated on Thursday February 28, 2008 at 12:25:01 PST (GMT -0800)
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