Was anyone really surprised when headlines such as ‘Hawaii Tourism Slumps on Heels of Smoking Ban’ began to appear, barely weeks into what is probably one of the world’s harshest bans?
Hawaii’s chief industry is tourism. It supports almost one in three jobs and is responsible for pulling in more than a quarter of GDP. ‘Experts’ assured a jittery pre-ban hospitality trade that business would boom. The affluent world had come to expect ‘smoke-free’ – even the high-spending Japanese who, oddly enough, faced no such restrictions at home,
And then – all the usual excuses for a sudden, entirely ‘unforeseen’ downward spiral of closures and loss that ALWAYS seem to trail in the wake of smoking bans. Another bewildered victim of the health lobby finds itself having to seek complicated and unpopular ways of dealing with economic disaster.
It is 5 years that those first bad-news headlines let on that things weren’t quite as the experts had promised. Now, one of Hawaii’s governing bodies, The House Economic Revitalization and Business Committee, has publicly acknowledged the elephant in the room by an overwhelming 10-1 vote to amend the national ban.
The Committee’s proposal is not a repeal of the ban, but simply the introduction of exemptions that would see property rights restored to licensed bar owners and choice returned to everyone else.
Gov. Neil Abercombe, whose support is essential if the proposals are to be passed, will be under immense pressure from the health lobby not to endorse these modest amendments. No doubt, their arguments will be couched in terms of health vs. business, under the false assumption that these two states cannot be mutually beneficial.
Committee House member, Tom Brower, has a wiser understanding of life:
The more freedom we give to visitors as well as residents, I think the happier that people are and the more they feel that they can enjoy all that life has to offer.
We couldn’t agree more!