New year brings new style of dining
Three Milan restaurants to go smoke free
Wanda English Burnett - Editor

The new year will bring a new change for three Milan restaurants - they'll be smoke free. No longer will you be able to fire up a cigarette inside The Reservation Restaurant, Momma Milano's, or the Railroad Inn in Milan. They have joined Ernie's Pizza and McDonald's in Versailles, offering smokeless dining.

What do some customers of The Reservation Restaurant in Milan have to say about the impending change?

Emotions were running high and comments freely given at the "social smokers" table at the Reservation on Tuesday of this week. "We practice courtesy without having it thrust on us," agreed a quartet of men - Curt Craven, Terry Brown, Steve Bousum and Floyd Ryker, who say they are willing to put their cigarettes out if it truly bothers someone. The men were enjoying a few days of smoking at the round table where they have eaten many meals, drank lots of coffee, and yes, smoked lots of cigarettes.

"I pay 76-cents tax per pack on these," noted Craven as he held up his pack of Pall Mall cigarettes. "Where's the government gonna' get their money from if we all quit?" He noted that cigarette smokers are penalized by paying high prices for the cigarette, and are now being run out of places they like to frequent.

"What I want to know is where is it gonna' stop?" questioned Terry Brown, who drives a truck for a living. He says in his travels, especially to California, he finds many restrictions on smokers that he feels are simply an infringement on people's rights.

"They should worry more about drunk drivers," noted Ryker. "And people on cell phones while driving," added Craven.

The four had strong feelings about the restaurant they say they've come to for years cutting out smoking.

Others in the restaurant had strong feelings too.

"We're really excited about this," noted Jeanne Kinnett, who was gathered with her daughter and three grandchildren just around the corner from the "smoking table" in the non-smoking section. "We don't like having our grandchildren around the smoke or having to breathe it ourselves," she said.

Granddaughter Courtney Hosmer, 13, was glad to see the smoking ban saying, "I don't like the smoke- it hurts my eyes." Her sister, Haylee, 8, agreed, concluding, "smoking is bad."

A couple who have just moved back to the area from Arkansas said they would enjoy dining in a smoke-free place. "We feel people have a choice - second-hand smoke has been proven to be harmful to your health," noted Nancy Sefton, who with husband, John, noted they don't have anything against smokers, they just don't want to breathe in their smoke.

"I know how these smokers feel - but, I'm glad for the change," noted Donna Livingston, who has been a waitress at the restaurant for over 11 years. She said she's an ex-smoker, who is grateful to the owners for making the decision to cut it out. "When you're here all day, you breathe in everyone's smoke - it's bad," she noted.

"We had been thinking about going smoke-free for some time," began Jeff Holt, owner of the restaurant. "And, one day when some people actually got up and left because they couldn't stand the smoke, that finalized the decision," he noted.

Holt says the decision to go smoke-free is simply one to afford a better atmosphere for dining. "It's nothing personal," he concluded.

John Emig, owner of Momma Milano's, is an ex-smoker who says his decision to join The Reservation and Milan Railroad Inn in smoke-free dining, "isn't to pick on people."

"One day I looked out and saw one person smoking at a table of five. It looked like a haze surrounding the whole table." Emig said at that time he decided he needed to make a change.

"I'm going to put a bench outside for my customers," he noted. He said the idea of going smoke-free is embraced by as many customers as oppose it. "It's about 50/50 right now."

The Milan Railroad Inn, owned by Rick Zumwalde, has been smoke-free on the weekends for about six months with not much resistance. According to Zumwalde, who noted the bar side of the business still allows smoking, the restaurant will be completely smoke free as of January 1. "So far there have been more positive comments than negative," he told The Versailles Republican on Wednesday. The reason for his decision? Well, it was something he'd been watching going on in other places and felt it would give his patrons chance to enjoy their food in a smoke-free environment.

The positive feedback Zumwalde has received so far has made him certain his decision was the right one.

A spokesperson for Ernie's Pizza in Versailles, said their customers were divided when they first made the decision to go smoke-free a couple of months ago. But, since that time, they haven't seen a decline in business and smokers who enjoy Ernie's great food still come back - they just don't smoke while inside the one room dining area.

The leader of smoke-free dining in the area is McDonald's of Versailles. They've been a non-smoking facility for two years and according to June Kieffer, a McS.T.A.R. employee, it's been great.

"We only had two complaints that I know of," she noted, saying second-hand smoke is extremely harmful and after all, McDonald's targeting much of their business to children.

"I wash down the walls once a month," she noted, saying that before the restaurant went smoke-free, the water would absolutely be black - now, it's just dust.

Kim Thomas, RN with the Ripley County Health Department heads up the Ripley County Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program. She commends the three newest restaurants that have come on board to be smoke-free saying she has information to prove that the effects of second-hand smoke are very harmful.

Statistics provided by Thomas say that for every eight smokers who die from using tobacco products, one non-smoker is killed by secondhand smoke. Another startling statistic says that secondhand smoke is the third leading cause of preventable death in the country, killing 53,000 nonsmokers in the U.S. each year.

Thomas noted that the smoke from smoldering cigarettes contains a high concentration of carbon monoxide. "There are enough harmful compounds in exhaled cigarette smoke to cause bystander's heart rates and blood pressures to increase - the same physiological actions which can lead to heart attacks in smokers."

Information from Thomas notes that "secondhand smoke can be especially detrimental to children, saying they may develop more respiratory problems, bronchitis, pneumonia, ear infections, coughing, wheezing, and worsened asthma. Children of smokers are much more likely to pick up the habit themselves.

Thomas shares information from a new study that found employees working in smoke-filled hospitality venues breathe air that is in violation of federal air quality standards. Pollution levels were 4.6 times higher than permissible standards and nearly 20 times greater than outdoor air. She also noted that smoke-free laws boost property values. "A recent study found a median 16 percent increase in the sale price of a restaurant in a smoke-free jurisdiction, over the sale price of a comparable restaurant in a community without a law for smoke-free public places." This information comes from the Journal of Contemporary Economic Policy.

The three Milan restaurants will have their no smoking policy in effect as of January 1, 2005. "Hopefully, these restaurants, along with Ernie's Pizza and McDonalds in Versailles, will help pave the way to providing better family dining for each and everyone," concluded Thomas.