What economic impact have smoking bans had in other states?
In 2008, Michael Pakko of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis released a study on the economic impact of a smoking ban on restaurants and bars in Columbia, Mo. Pakko found economic losses of 6.5 to 11 percent when 100 percent bans were implemented. A 2005 study on the smoking ban in bars and pubs in Ontario, Canada, conducted by Michael K. Evans, Ph.D., of Evans, Carroll and Associates, found that after a smoking ban was imposed, sales at bars and pubs were 23.5 percent lower in Ottawa, 18.7 percent lower in London, 24.3 percent lower in Kingston and 20.4 percent lower in Kitchener. In 2004, an Empire State Restaurant and Tavern Association study found the total economic impact of the New York state smoking ban to be a loss of 2,650 jobs, $50 million in worker earnings and $71.5 million in gross state product. In the year following enactment of a March 2003 smoking ban in Dallas, Texas, restaurants saw an $11.8 million decline in alcohol sales. Individual restaurants experienced drop
