San Francisco is trying to stub out your ability to make a bad decision.

Supervisor Myrna Melgar has put forward a proposal that would ban cigarette smoking on patios, setting up a battle with bar and tavern owners who are feeling the strain as young people drink less.

If approved, the legislation would eliminate one of the few remaining spaces in the city where customers can legally light up.

Ben Bleiman, founder of the SF Bar Owner Alliance, which has roughly 530 members, and president of the city’s Entertainment Commission, described the measure as a solution in search of a problem. Outdoor smoke dissipates, and few people are genuinely troubled by it, he said. He predicts that a ban would lead bar customers to smoke on sidewalks, which would be more of a nuisance for neighbors and pedestrians.

“The general public didn’t sign up to walk through a bunch of people smoking,” said Bleiman, who owns Harrington’s Bar & Grill on Front Street and doesn’t smoke.

Melgar, who introduced the ordinance last month, said the change is needed to protect workers from secondhand smoke. Co-sponsored with Supervisor Danny Sauter, it would amend the city’s health code to prohibit smoking on patios at bars and taverns and would bring the city in line with state law, which has grown stricter in regulating exposure to secondhand smoke. The ordinance (opens in new tab) would also force owner-operated venues like the Occidental Cigar Club to choose between selling tobacco products or alcohol.

Smoking outdoors at bars is illegal under state law but has not been enforced in San Francisco. Melgar hopes her legislation will deter bars from flouting the ban.

“I don’t think tobacco smoke is essential to building community,” Melgar said. She recalled that banning smoking indoors was controversial at the time but is now widely accepted.

The philosophical core of the legislation, she added, comes down to consent.

“In San Francisco, we are often permissive, but it’s different when making choices for yourself versus exposing people to others’ choices,” she said. “We live in a society where people can do things.” 

The San Francisco Marin Medical Society, which brought the issue to Melgar’s attention, said the economic fears of bar owners are not borne out by evidence. Adam Francis, the organization’s senior director of advocacy and policy, said he was surprised to learn that bar patios in San Francisco were exempt from smoking prohibitions, given the city’s history of leadership in tobacco control. Other Bay Area cities have enacted bans without the predicted fallout, he said.

“There hasn’t been the economic impact that everyone is saying is going to happen,” Francis said. “The same arguments were made when they talked about getting rid of smoking in restaurants and restaurant patios. History has shown that that actually hasn’t happened.”

The legislation drew a 6-0 vote of opposition from the San Francisco Small Business Commission on April 27. In a letter (opens in new tab) to the Board of Supervisors, Katy Tang, director of the Office of Small Business, noted commissioners’ worry that customers displaced from patios would move to the sidewalks, creating friction with neighbors over noise, smoke, and late-night congregating.

More than a dozen bars, restaurants, and small business groups signed a formal opposition letter (opens in new tab) to the board ahead of that hearing. The letter argued that the ordinance is politically convenient but not useful. “This ordinance does not add a single unit of housing,” the letter said. “It does not speed a single permit. It does not address the fentanyl crisis.”

Lynne Angel, co-owner of El Rio, a bar established in 1978, said the patio has been central to the business’ survival since the pandemic. “Having an outside space saved us,” she said. “This proposed legislation feels like yet another hurdle for small businesses in the city.”

Neil Holbrook, co-owner of O’Reilly’s Irish pub on Haight Street, estimated that 80% of his parklet’s nighttime use is driven by smokers and predicted that banning them from it would push them to the sidewalk.

“My customers are just going to go a few feet down the street,” he said. “It’s not going to be any cleaner.”

The ordinance is pending before the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Transportation Committee.