Mona Sayegh doesn’t completely dislike the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act—the voter-passed initiative that wiped out all forms of tobacco smoking inside any place that serves food—but then again, she’s not a big fan of it either.
One of the first things that came to mind for Sayegh, co-owner of the Olive, a popular Mediterranean restaurant and hookah lounge located at 3850 E. Sunset Road, when the initiative passed in 2006 was how it would affect her business.
“We were scared we’d have to shut down completely,” Sayegh says. “Selling tobacco products is our business.”
But after a health inspector with the Southern Nevada Health District came to her restaurant in August armed with a complaint that the three-and-a-half-year-old restaurant was still selling tobacco-based hookah to patrons, Sayegh got creative, allowing the sale of the non-tobacco herbal hookah during the hours the kitchen is open, then switching to tobacco when the kitchen closes around 9 p.m. on weeknights.
“We just don’t sell tobacco products while serving food,” Sayegh says. “But the kitchen has to be closed [if we’re going to sell it].”
It is issues like this that have Southern Nevada Health District general counsel Stephen Minagil scrambling to define what is and isn’t acceptable when it comes to the law. This summer Minagil and the Health District will present to the public and business owners alike the rules and regulations of the ban, explaining what is and isn’t allowed under the law. It’s taken awhile to get to this point, Minagil explained, because the state’s various health departments—Reno, Carson City and Southern Nevada—have to be on the same page on how to enforce the law.
Yet while some bar owners may feel that hookah lounges seem to have skated through the ban unharmed, lounge owners such as Sayegh have been in contact and working with officials to stay in compliance with the law. Outside of the hourly regulations self-imposed by the Olive, other lounges have opted to clear their tobacco stocks in favor of the herbal product that is not prohibited under the law.
Still, some lounges—as many taverns and bars have already—are readying their establishments for the possibility of further regulation by spending thousands of dollars on retrofitting rooms and lounges to comply with the law. The Olive itself spent around $20,000 alone renovating its interior to comply with the law.
But whether or not the exemptions and rules fit to the Olive and similar businesses, of the more than 3,800 reported complaints of law violations, very few of them have had to deal with hookah lounges, says Stephanie Bethel, public information officer with the Health District.
“We’ve had no complaints regarding hookah lounges in at least eight or nine months,” Bethel says. “Most of them are about bars and taverns.”
But in the end are bars and taverns getting a double standard forced upon them unfairly, while the lounges get to run business as usual? Reggie Reynolds, bar manager of Westside pub and restaurant Three Angry Wives, says no.
“Our type of business is totally different,” Reynolds says. “Hookah lounges and bars are like comparing apples to oranges. Besides, it’s not like the guys who were smoking in bars are quitting and going to hookah lounges anyway.”