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Smokers Snuff Out Cigarettes As New Smoking Ordinance Takes Effect

Springfield smokers snuffed out their cheap cigarettes after midnight Friday at bars and restaurants as the city’s new smoking cigarettes ordinance went into effect.

At Finnegan’s Wake, employee Melissa Lewis carried around an ashtray for patrons to put out their last cigarettes in. Employees had removed the ashtrays at the tables about three minutes before midnight.

Erin Sammons, 23, puffed on her Marlboro 72 several times as Lewis stood waiting.

“What am I going to do with my hands?” asked Sammons, a nurse at St. John’s who smokes when she’s out with friends or during breaks at work. “I’m thinking that cigarette was not finished.”

The smoking cigarettes ban went into effect after a Greene County judge decided Friday not to delay implementation of Springfield’s new smoking cigarettes ordinance.

An attorney for Ruthie’s Bar on Commercial Street had sought the delay, called a preliminary injunction, while a lawsuit challenging the ban is resolved.

Associate Circuit Judge Jason Brown ruled against the request, allowing the ban — which prohibits smoking cigarettes in most work places and buildings open to the public — to take effect as planned at midnight Friday.

At the Fedora Social House, a bartender grabbed the ash trays away from Chelsea Longe and Springfield's Pat Alonzo. "They should play a song — like funeral music," Alonzo said, after finishing his last cigarette and finishing the last of his drink at the downtown Springfield bar.

Longe, a Springfield native, was used to the ban as a current St. Louis resident.

"My only problem is that this is a college town," Longe said. "But if I'm somewhere out, I don't mind. But, yeah, if I'm out to dinner, I don't want someone smoking cigarettes in my face."

After their ash tray was removed, Longe and Alonzo grabbed their things. Then they left.

"Bars need to accommodate for it and have a place that is made for you to go outside (and smoke)," Alonzo said. "But when it's cold and frigid weather, that's when people will start hating it."

At Packer's Lounge in northeast Springfield, co-owner Kathi Marshall passed out free discount cigarettes and food before the midnight deadline and provided a live band at the bar's outside patio.

"There's so many people here I'm not going to tell them to quit at 12:01a.m.,” she said. “My main concern is slinging drinks and making my customers happy," she said.

To prepare for the smoking cigarettes ban, Marshall had expanded the bar’s patio, added extra tables and made sure her customers were aware of the ordinance.

“We decided to go out with a bang,” she said minutes before midnight.

When the new ordinance went into effect, a handful of customers headed to the outside patio where it was still legal to smoke. Others inside the bar lit cheap cigarettes either oblivious to or in defiance of the new ordinance.

Bar patron Carey Lindsey of Strafford said he is a nonsmoker but doesn't object to smoking cigarettes in bars.

"This all came from a bunch of religious people that don't go out to bars anyway who want to regulate everyone else," Lindsey said.

Pointing to the outdoor patio, Lindsey made an observation.

"When winter time comes along, what are they going to do?" he said. "It's going to be a real hardship for bar owners."

Bar patron Elizabeth Bennett of Springfield said she worried how much business the bar stands to lose because of the ordinance.

"It's kind of ridiculous to stop smokers from smoking cigarettes in a bar," she said.

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