A bar owner's view of a Minnesota statewide smoking ban

Ron Doty, owner of TJ Finnegan's Pub in Mankato, has been in the bar and restaurant business for 45 years. For 44 of those years smoking was allowed in his restaurants.

Today, TJ Finnegan's is known for its outstanding pizza, and Ron is known as a longtime supporter of the local music scene. Recently he sent out the statement below to his customer email list.

WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS

by Ron Doty

To all my customers and friends, smokers and non-smokers, I want us all to shake hands and still be friends when the smoke clears in Mankato.

To the nonsmokers who supported the Mankato smoking ban, I am sorry to say the smoking ban did hurt our businesses just as we thought it would, maybe more drastically than imagined. There just were not the numbers of nonsmokers willing to make the lifestyle changes it would have required to take up the slack from the lost customers when the smokers left to find the places they could drink, eat and smoke at the same time.

Many of the Mankato bars have returned to allowing smoking after proving that their business were financially hurt. They did it because they had to in order to survive. I ask the nonsmokers that they now or in the future not punish them by withholding your business from them. The Smoking Bill is now where it should be for the good of all the people and the businesses in Minnesota, in the State Legislature.

TJ's has remained smokefree, my choice. My bar business is still down, the pizza business is getting back to where it was before the ban, and for that I want to thank all my friends and customers, new and old.

I believe that within five years you will see all of America go smokefree. A few years from now we will wonder why it wasn't done sooner.

I ask all of us to make the best of it, whatever your point of view. Like Red Green says at the end of his PBS TV show, The Red Green Show, "We're all in this together," so let's tolerate each other's point of view.