In November of last year, Ballot Question 5 passed by a hairsbreadth. The following month the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act was set into motion. It is intended to prohibit smoking inside all indoor areas within restaurants or any other place that cooks and serves food, save for private residences, strip clubs, brothels and, most notably, casinos.
Right from the start, bars, pubs, taverns and saloons—those which had fought the hardest against the new law back when it was a ballot question—put up resistance.
Many practiced flat-out disobedience, turning a blind eye to the new law. Others took the sly route and hid their smoking paraphernalia, bartenders keeping matches and lighters in their pockets and offering patrons shot glasses as ash trays. Then a group of bar owners fought the new law in District Court, and though they did not win, they did convince a judge to rule that the law was to be enforced as a non-criminal violation by the county’s health district.
Now some businesses are looking for ways around the law, and the Golden Tavern Group, for one, has been effective. The company, which operates the Valley’s 34 PT’s bars, has instituted a number of tactics inside certain establishments to outmaneuver the NCIA, such as:
• Erecting floor-to ceiling barriers between the bar and restaurant areas;
• Maintaining more than the 16 slot machines necessary for a nonrestricted gaming license, which puts an establishment in the class of casinos;
However, these tactics are not plausible for all bars in town.
Erecting barriers—especially with glass walls and fine wood, as multiple PT’s have done—is a large project, demanding up to a month’s worth of construction, the company says. And nonrestricted gaming licenses are expensive: First, there is an annual tax to be paid of $250 per machine; second, a quarterly license fee of $20 per machine; and finally, there is a monthly percentage fee ranging from 3.5 to 6.75 percent, depending on how much the machines pull in.
It’s a heavy price to pay to keep things the way they used to be.