A drink, a puff - legally

Smoke thickens the air at Kilgallen's as the blue-collar crowd knocks back pints of Guinness at the glinty wooden bar.

It has been that way for 60 years at the mom-and-pop joint in Havertown, and despite Pennsylvania's indoor-smoking ban, which took effect Sept. 11, nothing has changed.

That's because the Irish bar is one of 2,252 establishments exempted from the law.

The Clean Indoor Air Act bans smoking in most public places, including many bars, restaurants, taxis, schools, warehouses and government buildings. Exempted, however, are small bars where food accounts for less than 20 percent of sales and bar restaurants that meet certain structural requirements.

So far, 3,206 businesses have applied for the exemption, said Stacy Kriedeman, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health. Of the applications that have been decided, none has been turned down. In Bucks, Montgomery, Chester and Delaware Counties, 239 have been approved.

For small neighborhood taverns such as Kilgallen's - where the prices are low, the atmosphere is friendly, no one is remotely hip, and clothes reek of cigarette smoke at the end of the night - going smoke-free would hurt business, owner Jim Kilgallen said. Customers might stay home to light up or go to bars that ignored the ban.

"My place is an Irish shot-and-a-beer bar," Kilgallen said. "We have workmen coming in. We don't serve food. It would have hurt us."

Tracey Wesolowski, who owns Joe's Bar in Chester with her husband and his brother, said she had picked up customers from bars that don't allow smoking.

"They didn't know about the exemption," she said of those establishments.

Joe's was opened by her husband's Ukrainian grandfather in 1933, the year Prohibition ended, and still serves Old World specialties with the standard drink, a boilermaker.

A "good majority" of her loyal customers are smokers, Wesolowski said. At the end of a workday or during an Eagles game, their crumpled cigarette packs and ashtrays line the 25-seat bar.

To win exemptions, bars had to submit projections of the coming year's tax receipts. Bigger places needed a visit to make sure they complied with requirements such as separate entrances for the bar and restaurant and separate ventilation systems.

The state ban does not include Philadelphia, which enacted its own in 2006. The city's law allows smoking at private clubs and bars where food accounts for no more than 10 percent of sales.

Smaller establishments and restaurants near exempted bars and clubs have lost business, said Amy Christie, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Tavern Association, which represents 1,500 mom-and-pop bars.

"If you are on the same block or even a few blocks away" from an exempted bar, she said, "it's going to hurt."

Upscale restaurants say customers no longer linger over drinks after dinner because they can't smoke, Christie said, "and if you know anything about the restaurant business, you make your dollars on alcohol, not the food."

There has been no exit rush at the Lamplighter, a bar and restaurant near Kilgallen's where smoking is not allowed, manager Courtenay Quinn said. Smokers just go outside to light up.

"A lot of people prefer it. It's not as smoky in here," she said.

Many smoking opponents think the ban doesn't go far enough. State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R., Bucks), author of the Clean Indoor Air Act, plans to introduce legislation that would eliminate exceptions, ban smoking at outdoor cafes, and allow municipalities to pass even tougher laws, as Philadelphia did.

Greenleaf said studies showed that smoking bans did not harm restaurants and bars financially. But bans could save lives. A new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linked a smoking ban in Pueblo, Colo., to a 41 percent drop in heart-attack hospitalizations there. At least eight earlier studies produced similar results.

The Pennsylvania Tavern Association vowed to fight the planned bill.

"We actually would like to see the exemptions increased," Christie said. "We want it to go from 20 percent or less to 30 percent or less. That's much more fair."

Ideally, she said, the group would like the state to stop passing legislation that regulates legal adult activity.

"It is not the government's place to come in and put a mandate on legal products that the state itself collects over a billion dollars off of," she said. "When you're talking about schools, hospitals, playgrounds and day-care centers, that's one thing. But these are adult establishments."