Tootsie’s Bar & Grill owner Dale Miller says he’s never smoked a cigarette in his life. But he’s dead set against letting the government tell smokers they can’t light up in his Annandale establishment. Miller was the most outspoken of four area restaurant and bar owners surveyed last week about a possible statewide smoking ban. All opposed a ban for bars, and only one favored a smoking ban in restaurants. Annandale area state legislators Sen. Steve Dille, R-Dassel, and Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Grove City, have predicted the new Legislature will adopt a statewide smoking ban of some sort. Dille and Urdahl said they favor a statewide ban, at least in restaurants where children can be exposed to other people’s smoke. Their districts include Meeker County, and Dille’s takes in McLeod County as well. Both have passed smoking bans. "I think it’s ridiculous that they want to do it," Miller said of a statewide measure. "I just don’t think it should be the government’s say what you can and can’t do." People shouldn’t smoke in the dining room where people are eating, he said. But "you have the option to say, ‘I don’t want to be there.’" "I’m opposed to it period because you’re taking away your constitutional rights." "I just think it’s none of their business." Miller also said he would lose business if a statewide ban were passed. One bar owner in Minneapolis, where smoking is banned, told him he lost over $60,000 in a month, Miller said. And smoking customers have told him if a statewide smoking ban passed they wouldn’t come in to drink or eat. Kathy Erdmann, owner of the Homestyle Country Cafe in Annandale, said she’d be OK with a ban in restaurants because people don’t spend a lot of time in them. "They come and go," she said, and can refrain from smoking during that time. She believes she wouldn’t lose customers as a result. But Erdmann, who’s also a non-smoker, said she wouldn’t like to see a ban in bars, where people socialize and sit around more and where it’s more important to be able to smoke. There are also no children in bars, she said. A statewide ban would be fairer to the businesses, Erdmann said, because if one county banned smoking, customers wouldn’t be able to drive to the next county to indulge their habit. At Mom’s Cafe in South Haven, co-owner Mary Ann Edwards opposes banning smoking in restaurants and bars. Mom’s new building has a non-smoking area in a separate room as well as air exchangers and smoke eaters, so the air isn’t bad, she said. It’s also a matter of freedom of choice, and people can choose not to patronize a restaurant they find too smokey. A smoking ban would also be difficult to enforce, she said. People have said and will say, "Try and stop me." "I really don’t like a ban," the non-smoker said, "but if they’re going to do it, it has to be statewide and not just county to county." Mom’s is near the Stearns County border, and if Wright County passed a smoking ban but Stearns didn’t, the cafe would lose business across the county line. But she doesn’t like a statewide ban for bars because "people that drink tend to smoke." LaVon Mauer, owner of LaLa’s Bar & Grill in South Haven, said she’s against a statewide ban. It would hurt her after-10 p.m. business, when people come in to drink and who smoke when they drink. "I think it would hurt a lot of businesses," said Mauer, who is a smoker herself.
