A D.C. Council member wants to exempt large hotels from the District’s strict smoking ban, once a year only, so that the District’s well-heeled can enjoy a cigar indoors during a pair of annual events.
Legislation authored by Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans would provide an exemption “once a year for one day for the purposes of hosting a special event which permits cigar smoking.”
Any hotel with banquet space for at least 500 could apply, and hotel employees must be allowed to opt out of working the event without penalty. Evans will ask his colleagues Tuesday to adopt the bill on an emergency basis.
As it would take effect immediately, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick could light up during their annual St. Patrick’s Day dinner at the Capitol Hilton. The organizers of Fight Night at the Washington Hilton, held in November, also might relish the exemption. Evans is a member of the Friendly Sons, a social organization for the area’s Irish upper crust. The council member suggested that event promoters might take their business elsewhere if they are not freed from the smoking ban. “Tradition and economic development,” Evans said, explaining the reasons for the bill. “Both.”
His proposal, though, has anti-smoking activists upset. Lifting the ban for single events is arbitrary, dangerous for workers and bad policy, Angela Bradbery, co-founder of Smokefree D.C., wrote in a letter to the council. “Why not let restaurants slide once a year on sanitary food requirements?” she asked. Evans pitched similar legislation last year, specifically for the Friendly Sons, but the measure was not considered.
This time, he has secured the support of at-large Councilman David Catania, chairman of the health committee, who said he would vote for the bill “provided there are accommodations made for staff who have allergies or who don’t want to work in that environment.” At-large Councilman Phil Mendelson said he will oppose it. “If it’s not right to be smoking inside,” Mendelson said, “then it’s not right to be smoking inside.”
Cigars are not critical to the success of Fight Night, said Jeff Travers, spokesman for organizer Fight for Children. But they are an event tradition — like motorcycles and large steaks — Travers said. Fight Night was granted a waiver from the smoking ban in 2007, but that exemption expired after the 2009 event.
