City’s patio smokers may be told to butt out

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This article was published 19/05/2017 (3092 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG is one of just a few Canadian cities where people can still light up a cigarette while having a beer or two on a licensed patio.

It might be time for that to change, city Coun. Mike Pagtakhan says.

“It’s probably the next natural progression,” Pagtakhan (Point Douglas) said of building on existing city bylaws around where you can or can’t light up.

While it’s clear second-hand smoke is carcinogenic and bad for your health, the councillor said he’d like to see more research and consultation before Winnipeg decides whether or not to update bylaws to ban smoking on patios.

Anecdotally, Pagtakhan said he’s heard from a few restaurant and bar owners who have patios and would like to institute a ban, but he doesn’t have any hard data on how most owners, servers, drinkers or passersby would react.

“I’d like to hear what health experts have to say. I’d certainly like to hear from restaurateurs,” he said.

“I think a discussion needs to take place.”

Pagtakhan said he thinks people seem to be more accepting of the fact smoking is bad for your health.

“We certainly want to keep up with the desires and wishes of society,” he said.

Nick Diacos, owner of Carlos & Murphy’s, which has both a smoking and a non-smoking patio, is fairly ambivalent on the subject.

“I don’t care if they ban it,” Diacos said. “If it gets banned, it gets banned — there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Diacos, who isn’t a smoker, said there are often non-smokers sitting in the smoking patio but the reverse isn’t true. He said he wasn’t sure what prompted him to make one patio smoke-free and the other not.

“I don’t know — to give people a choice,” he said.

“If it happens, it happens,” Diacos said of banning smoking on patios. After all, “They banned it in restaurants years ago, so they’ve got to get with the times.”