The First Facility Management Blog

This story contrasts a FacilityBlog Weird Wednesday post about a fast food chain in China that was losing business because of its smoke free policy. In Minnesota, bar owners are going to great lengths to undermine the state’s new cigarette ban.

According to a 3/8/08 article from Ed Pilkington of The Guardian:

More than 100 bars across the state have started holding “theater nights” in which patrons are encouraged to dress up in period costume and project their voices, playbills are pinned on the walls, and bar paraphernalia makes up the props.

The bars are seeking to bypass a smoking ban introduced last October by exploiting a loophole that allows cigarettes to be puffed in theatrical productions.

The creative idea was the brainchild of Mark Benjamin, a lawyer who feels the policy infringes on the rights of citizens. (How do you like that, Poor Richard?)

Pilkington continues,

Bars have taken to calling their theater nights “Before the Ban”, which allows them to claim that their customers are in character playing themselves before the October injunction came down. Black cloth is draped over entrances, with notices saying “Stage Entrance”. And ashtrays are piled up under the label “Props”. Other bars hand out badges to anyone who donates a dollar saying “Act Now!”

Officials in the state are warning makeshift “theaters” that they are still breaking the law, an act that could cost as much as $10,000 and result in the loss of the bar’s operating license.