Updated 11:35 a.m.
Legislation to ban smoking in some outdoor seating areas of restaurants and bars in Montgomery County was unanimously approved by the County Council Tuesday morning.
The bill was proposed in October 2018 by District 3 Council member Sidney Katz and co-sponsored by councilmembers Hans Riemer and Craig Rice, as well as Marc Elrich, before he was elected county executive.
It was amended by the council’s Health and Human Services committee to permit smoking only on upper-level restaurant balconies and rooftops, as well as on golf courses with adjacent restaurants. The committee approved the bill, which also includes vaping and e-cigarette smoking, on Feb. 4.
“Sometimes we (the Council) are painted as anti-business, but this is a shining example of us working together with businesses to strike a balance that satisfies the need to promote community health and promoting nightlife,” said Craig Rice, a Democrat who represents District 2 in upper Montgomery County.
Montgomery becomes the first county in Maryland to establish a law banning open-air dining area smoking, according to Adam Zimmerman, a Rockville resident who pushed for the law.
Gaithersburg and Rockville have outdoor smoking bans in place.
“Montgomery County has the lowest adult smoking rate of any county in the state of Maryland, and part of the reason why is because we’ve taken such a comprehensive approach to smoke-free air laws,” Zimmerman said. “This is another great step in that direction, for all the kids and families who live here, for folks who work at restaurants, patronize restaurants, both from a health standpoint and from an economic one.”
Six months after Montgomery County’s 2003 indoor smoking ban that included restaurants was enacted, the county saw a 7 percent increase in restaurant tax revenue, in comparison to the same six-month period of the previous year, Zimmerman said.
The bans have had mixed reviews from restaurant owners and managers.
Claudia Matus, general manager of Trapezaria Mediterranian Kuzina in Rockville, said that she hasn’t heard any of her customers complain about being unable to smoke in the restaurant’s outdoor seating area.
“I support it [the ban]. I feel like it’s better for the environment and it just provides a cleaner area, so I don’t see it as a negative thing … we haven’t really lost any business because of it,” she said.
It remains legal to smoke outside a restaurant, provided that the area does not fall under any categories of county property in which a 2013 law banned smoking in, such as bus shelters. The updated law allows businesses to designate rooftop and balconies as smoking areas.
“I know that a lot of places are designating certain areas for smoking that are a little bit away from buildings, so maybe the county can implement that more – you know, just permit restaurants maybe to have a designated area where smokers can go in that’s still outside, maybe just a few feet away from the perimeter of the building or the restaurant,” Matus said.
The council held a public forum on the issue on Oct. 23 at which Bethesda bar owners Alan Pohoryles and Ronnie Heckman spoke out against the proposed ban.
“They’re making a problem out of something that’s not really a problem,” Tommy Joe’s owner Pohoryles said in an interview.
“The fact of the matter is, they’re taking away the business’s right to choose,” he said, referencing the roughly 200 restaurants and bars in Bethesda and the four that currently allow smoking on their patios.
Tommy Joe’s features an upper-level patio and is exempt.
Caddies on Cordell, owned by Heckman, also has an upstairs deck in addition to a first-level outdoor patio.
“Small businesses, we need all the advantages we can get … we already suffer with the restrictions and the laws from the liquor board, as hard as they are to deal with, and things like this continue to make it hard for us,” he said.
“If there’s a group of seven and there’s one smoker, now that one smoker can’t come here or doesn’t want to come here,” Heckman said. “…Crowds beget crowds. When there’s a bunch of people out on the patio, there’s more people that are going to come in the place.”
Staff writer Caitlynn Peetz contributed to this report.
This story has been updated from the initial posting to reflect the March 5 vote of the County Council and to clarify a quote attributed to Adam Zimmerman. Earlier versions of this story said that Zimmerman said Montgomery County saw a 7 percent increase in restaurant tax revenue in the six months following the county’s 2003 indoor smoking ban that included restaurants, compared to the previous six months. The increase is actually in comparison to the same six-month period of the previous year.