February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
About 4,000 tickets have been issued to date, and a city Health Department spokesperson said the small number of fines indicated that the ban has been a success.
“The measure of the law’s success is not in the amount of fines collected, but rather in its high compliance rate — over 95 percent,” said Elliott Marcus, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation.
“The Smoke Free Air Act was meant to be self-enforcing. The less we have to fine, the more it means that the SFAA is protecting the health of employees in businesses across the city,” he said.
The city has about 100 day time health inspectors at work in the city. A first offense will result in a fine of $200-$400. A second offense is $500-$1,000 and a third offense is $1,000-$2,000.
A bar can lose its license if it gets three or more violations in a 12-month period. No bar has had this imposed yet.
But bar owners and others opposed to the ban say the small amount collected in fines is because the ban is enforced in midtown and downtown Manhattan — and really nowhere else.
By comparison, other quality of life violations such as sanitation, raised $24 million in fines for the city.
The city also collected $866,667 for noise-code violations, but some critics have said many of the violations have been the result of the smoking ban forcing smokers on to streets outside bars, that are themselves located underneath apartments.