Necessary Roughness

The Columbus Dispatch reports that smoking lounges are cutting down on food sales in order to raise the tobacco sales percentage to the 80% required by the newly passed smoking ban. They would rather keep the 65% (under the previous Columbus ban) that is tobacco business and scrap the food rather than go smoke-free.

Funny, I don’t remember seeing the 80% on the ballot text. That would have been good information.

That means that the Shisha Lounge in the University District, and others that offer Middle Eastern-style water pipes and tobacco, will remove nutritional juices, fresh meats and sandwiches.

The three-year-old shop’s tobacco sales complied with Columbus’ smoking ban, which allowed smoking as long as tobacco sales accounted for at least 65 percent of revenues.

A cooler of Naked brand juices, which contain exotic fruits, vegetables and vitamin supplements, will be removed, said owner Aaron Johnston.

“We’re going to actually start selling more tobacco this way,” he said, “to make sure we’re over the new limit.”

So it would seem that this new law is making certain businesses more dangerous than before. What fun artwork we create when our law paints with overly broad strokes.