Smoking, Please!
As both sides gear up for the next big anti-smoking battle down at the City-County building, I thought I would share this little thought. The public-smoking ban proponents have shifted the debate to argue that Indianapolis should be smoke free because it helps economic development. If that’s true then why is that when I look at cities in the region with total smoking bans they all have higher unemployment rates than Indianapolis which has a compromise in place?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics which keeps track of things like unemployment, Indianapolis has an unemployment rate of 8.2%. When I looked at other cities in the region, I was expecting them to fare better, since they had smoking bans. Here’s what I found.
- Columbus, OH – 8.9%.
- Chicago, IL – 9.7%.
- Nashville, TN – 9.8%.
- Louisville, KY – 10.3%.
To keep things fair, I only chose cities that had 100% smoke free bars and restaurants since that is what the anti-smoking people are trying to accomplish here. Even in Indiana towns with total smoking bans tend to have higher unemployment than Indianapolis.
- Elkhart – 16.0%.
- South Bend – 11.0%.
- Ft. Wayne – 10.2%.
The exception I found was Bloomington which had an unemployment rate of 6.7%. Of course Bloomington is also the home of Indiana University and college environments tend to whether bad economic times a little better than most places since Universities tend to be more recession proof.
Now of course there are many factors involved when it comes to why unemployment is higher in some places rather than others. But if you’re going to try to sell public smoking bans as an economic tool, it might help if the reality on the ground didn’t show that non-smoking cities had higher unemployment rates than the city where you’re trying to ban smoking.
By the way, it’s ironic that the area with the lowest unemployment in the country is Bismark, North Dakota at 3.3% allows smoking in bars, while the area with the highest unemployment, El Centro, California at 28.7% doesn’t.
I’m off to go enjoy a cigar and a couple cocktails. Feel free to join me.
