State officials, health experts and a Mainland consultant told members of the House and Senate health committees that there has been no negative economic impact since the state's smoke-free law was enacted in November 2006.

Rather, the experts said that there has been improvement to air quality and the quality of life for people with lung disease who previously found just going to work could send them to the hospital with breathing problems.

Small bar owners, however, emphasized that people have a choice where they work and what establishments to patronize, and an across-the-board ban doesn't recognize the segment of the population that chooses to light tobacco products in public. Owners of bars and nightclubs where smoking has always gone hand-in-hand with drinking say they have been forced to either disregard the law or cope with lost revenue.

The health committees' members — charged with improving the state's overall health — didn't seem inclined to adjust the rules on smoking, but House Health Committee Chairman Josh Green, an emergency room doctor, did seem willing to consider economic aid.

"I'm trying to make sure there's a way that the businesses can survive without having to rely on cigarettes, and it's a complicated issue," he said during an informational session at the state Capitol yesterday.

According to Jolynn Tenn, co-chair of the Hawai'i Smokers Alliance, about 20 bars across the state have decided to allow smoking inside despite the law, while more than 50 more have only nominally complied by posting signs but have not moved to enforce the ban.

She supports a waiver for bars that want to allow smoking, so people can choose whether to go to a smoke-free or smoke-friendly establishment.

Speaking for the Hawai'i Bar Owners Association, Bill Comerford, co-owner of three bars and nightclubs on O'ahu, said bar owners have been put in a position where their businesses and homes are at risk if they comply with the law, their licenses are at risk if they don't and there are noise and liability issues for bars that send their patrons off premises to smoke.

He suggested that the state create a class for liquor licenses to allow smoking, such as those that allow nudity, with a fee of $1,000 to $2,000 a year for the special licenses.

That way customers and employees can decide whether to enter a bar that allows smoking, just as they would decide whether to enter a strip club.

He also asked that bar owners and smokers be included in any talks to amend the law, unlike when it was created.

"Let us be part of the process," said Comerford, a nonsmoker.

Andrew Hyland, an epidemiologist from the New York-based Roswell Park Cancer Institute, said he will soon submit a report on the effects of Hawai'i's smoking ban, but told lawmakers that the state is not different from other states with similar bans: emotional reaction at the outset, but no negative economic impacts over the long term.

Noting that Hawai'i is the 23rd state to implement a ban on smoking in the workplace, he said: "There have been many other places that have gone smoke-free before. There's much to learn from those other locations."

Of the studies that have been reviewed, none concluded that smoke-free laws were bad for business, Hyland said. However, he added, "the data in the studies that have been done haven't looked at individual levels and tracked their sale before and after" the laws went into effect."

When Rep. Green asked Hyland if any of the other states have economic safety valves to help businesses hurt by the bans, the epidemiologist said that New York allows waivers. The area where he lives, near Niagara, has 12 waivers.

Hyland said while trends in New York bars and taverns indicate that they are worse off economically, the same can be said of similar establishments in neighboring New Jersey, which does not have a similar ban.

He emphasized, however, that the economic impacts should be considered only as a side effect of the ban. "The smoke-free law is for health reasons," he pointed out, and in that way it has been successful.

In other smoke-free places, "the air got cleaner, people supported it, compliance is high and the feared economic collapse didn't happen."

But Kona bar owner Sam Kekaula said that things are different for small bar owners, as opposed to larger nightclubs that might see an increase in clientele due to the smoking ban.

He said that he saw his revenue cut almost in half for the six weeks that he tried to comply with the smoking ban, but numbers went back to normal when he decided to allow smoking.

"There's a health issue. I'll go along with you, but there's people who smoke and people who do not smoke," he told lawmakers.

When Green asked him if he would support the ban if his revenue remained the same over five years, Kekaula said it was hard to answer because right now, most of his customers want to smoke.

Green said: "We don't want anyone to go out of business, but we want to do everything to improve the overall health."

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com.