Here’s a cliché: Try to describe a sunset to someone who didn’t see it.
A variation on that sensory subject is a retailing reality for a Vancouver businessman. In John Paul’s tobacco shops, the staff often has to paint a verbal picture of a cigar.
That’s because it’s illegal to light up a cigar inside a cigar shop.
Paul doesn’t expect that to change in his Cascade Park store, despite efforts in Olympia to ease restrictions on businesses that cater to pipe and cigar smokers.
Voters overwhelmingly approved a statewide indoor smoking ban in 2005 to protect employees and customers from secondhand smoke.
A Senate committee heard public testimony Thursday on a measure that would permit customers of cigar lounges and retail tobacco shops to smoke pipes and cigars on the premises.
The bill heard by the Senate Labor, Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee would permit as many as 100 cigar lounges and 500 retail tobacco shops to apply for endorsements to allow cigar and pipe smoking on their premises. Cigarette smoking still would be banned.
“It won’t affect us,” Paul said Thursday afternoon.
Architectural requirements in the proposal look to be deal-breakers for Paul. The new law would require a separate ventilation and exhaust system. His shop at 11600 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd. is right between a pub and an ice cream shop.
“We share ceiling space,” Paul said.
If the law passes, Paul would really need to set up shop in a free-standing building to take advantage of it.
“There’s not enough income in it,” Paul said.
His two stores in Portland include both kinds of establishments: one is a stand-alone shop where people can light up a pipe or a cigar; the other is a no-smoking establishment.
Applicants would have to pay the state a $15,000 fee to obtain a Washington cigar lounge endorsement; a tobacco store endorsement would cost $5,000.
That doesn’t pencil out either.
“There won’t be too many people taking advantage of that,” Paul predicted.
Lots of his customers know what they want when they walk in the store, but some can use help. And when all the person at the counter can offer is some adjectives, well … “That doesn’t make it easy,” Paul said.
“We can ask how frequently they smoke; if it’s isn’t often, we can recommend a mild cigar,” Paul said.
They might ask whether the cigars are part of an event that includes liquor.
“Alcohol deadens the senses, and you don’t want a mild cigar,” he said.
Everybody in the tobacco business around here will be facing the same issues if the bill becomes law, Paul said. He won’t wind up at a competitive disadvantage.
Still, the conversation in Olympia has been interesting to follow, he said.
“It’s good to see people looking at both sides,” he said.
Those sides being, “People who don’t want to see tobacco on the face of the earth, and those who believe in moderation and freedom of choice.”
A representative of the American Cancer Society testified against the bill, and State Secretary of Health Mary Selecky called the measure “a step in the wrong direction.”
The Labor, Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee has until the end of the day Monday to act on the measure.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
