EDITORIAL
Restaurant smoking: Will Maui join trend?

We applaud the Maui County Council's apparent willingness to ban smoking in restaurants. The Honolulu City Council approved a similar law that went into effect less than three weeks ago.

It's obviously too soon to say whether the doomsayers were right — that banning smoking in O'ahu eateries would diminish receipts in an already patchy economy.

But as we've pointed out before, however, smoking bans haven't hurt the restaurant industry in New York and California.

Perhaps even more important, employees of restaurants that permit smoking have no choice about the secondhand smoke that can and does shorten their lives.

If Maui does enact a ban, we suggest it learn one thing from the O'ahu experience — keep it simple. On O'ahu, for instance, restaurant bars can allow smoking for another year as long as they build a floor-to-ceiling wall separating the nonsmoking dining area from the bar and install a separate ventilation system.

Meanwhile, stand-alone bars or nightclubs are exempt from the law — if alcohol sales exceed two-thirds of the monthly gross receipts. That raises a complicated enforcement question, and it obviously fails the employees who will have to continue to eat smoke.

For Maui and for Kaua'i and the Big Island, whose councils are also developing smoking-ban proposals, we'd suggest they err on the side of health and simplicity — and to do it soon.