For Jay McGwire, Churchill’s cigar bar is a place to relax and strike up conversations while sipping a stout and smoking a cigar.
“I come here and I meet nice people,” McGwire said. “And I can’t smoke cigars in my house.”
But McGwire worries that eventually he will not be able to light up at Churchill’s, either. The Boston Public Health Commission is proposing some of the nation’s strictest smoking regulations, banning the sale of cigarettes at drugstores and on college campuses, and shutting down the city’s 10 cigar and hookah bars by 2013.
The goal, the commission said, is to discourage young people from buying tobacco products, to keep a harmful product out of stores that promote health and to protect employees who are exposed to secondhand smoke.
The Board of Health will vote on the regulations on Nov. 13. If approved they will take effect within 60 days.
“Should tobacco be treated as any other consumer good? No,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of the Board of Health. “We don’t sell guns everywhere, we don’t sell alcohol everywhere and we don’t need to be selling tobacco everywhere. They’re all dangerous products, and they all require regulation.”
The proposal has angered smokers and small business leaders, who say the pharmacies and cigar bars are being singled out unfairly.
“We believe, frankly, it’s discriminatory,” said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, which represents small businesses, including pharmacies. “It’s tying the hands of sellers and consumers alike, and that isn’t what government should be about.”
San Francisco passed a regulation in July banning the sale of cigarettes in drug stores. It was challenged in court, and a judge allowed the ban to begin on Oct. 1 despite the pending lawsuit.
Boston, however, takes the policy further with curbs on cigarettes on campuses and plans to close the smoking establishments. The smoking bars were exempted from a 2003 ban on smoking in all city workplaces, including bars and restaurants.
Ferrer, the health director, said the proposal was aimed at the growing number of hookah bars near college campuses, where patrons smoke flavored tobacco out of a water pipe.
The bars, she said, tend to attract 18 to 20-year-olds, who are too young to drink at a bar but want for a place to spend time.
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