University of Minnesota/OSU Tobacco Control Study Flawed; Combining Data on Bars and Restaurants Skewed Results
Posted on: Friday, 29 May 2009, 09:39 CDT
COLUMBUS, Ohio, May 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Ohio newspapers, radio and TV news recently broadcast the results of a study performed at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health with Elizabeth Klein, Assistant Professor, Health Behavior and Health Promotion, Ohio State University as lead researcher. This study was funded by ClearWay Minnesota, a non-profit organization that funds Minnesota tobacco control, and used employment data as its sole economic indicator. This study gained headlines in the media as "Ban hurting business? No, study says." (Columbus Dispatch, May 19, 2009, front page). All Headline News opened with "New research suggests that smoking bans in bars meant to improve the environmental quality of indoor air doesn't cause job losses." (Note: No reference to restaurants).
What is not mentioned is the reason that this study was conducted. According to the Abstract from Ms. Klein's study, "due to the perception of negative economic effects on alcohol-licensed hospitality businesses, partial CIA policies (those that provide an exemption for freestanding bars) have been proposed as a means to reduce the risk of economic effects of comprehensive CIA policies applied to all worksites."). UWeekly, an OSU student run publication, quotes Klein as saying "the places that made exemptions for bars they weren't significantly different from the places that provided no exemptions for bars."
Glaringly obvious even to a novice is that freestanding bars were supposed to be the target of the study. Even more obvious are these facts.
If this study was to determine if exemptions should be made for freestanding bars, why were restaurants included? Ms. Klein states in the study that NAICS industry code data was obtained for bars (NAICS 7224) and restaurants (NAICS 7221). If Ms. Klein received the data separately, why were they combined?
Perhaps it was because according to the latest NAICS on-line data for Minnesota, restaurants outnumbered bars nearly 3 to 1. It studied two major cities, four other cities and four suburbs with combined total of 1,084 bars and restaurants. If these ten cities followed the Minnesota average, then there were approximately 361 bars and 723 restaurants.
According to Statistical abstracts of the US, 2001, table 1263, there is a national average of ten restaurant employees for every one bar employee. That means if each bar only had one employee, there would be approximately 361 bar employees and 7,230 restaurant employees. Again, restaurants were not the target of this study, according to the Abstract, and yet they were included in this study. The effect of including restaurant employment data in this study is that job losses from bars are completely overwhelmed by restaurant employment data.
There was a very large study done in 2007 by Scott Adams and Chad D. Cotti, ("The Effect of Smoking Bans on Bars and Restaurants: An Analysis of Changes in Employment," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Vol.7: Iss. 1 (Contributions), Article 12.), whose methodologies were very closely followed by Ms. Klein with one very large difference; the Adams and Cotti study separated bars from restaurants. They concluded "the bar industry is more negatively affected by smoking bans than the restaurant industry. On the other hand, analysis of the restaurant industry is consistent with many of the aforementioned retail sales case studies, which find that smoking bans do not seem to have an effect on business in the restaurant industry as a whole. The lagged effects suggest that the negative bar effect occurs immediately and persists over time...Dunham and Marlow (2000b), for example, found that bars are predicted to be more than twice as likely to experience losses as restaurants, a result that suggests potentially large differences in the impact of smoking regulations on these two similar industries."
Tobacco Control is well aware smoking bans have little effect on restaurants while bars are negatively impacted. So why were restaurants included in Klein's study? According to Pat Carroll, President of the Buckeye Liquor Permit Holders Association, "It's obvious why it was done this way. It's to distort the truth. You can't lump bars and restaurants together. We have entirely different customers and provide different atmospheres. We demand this study be done again without restaurant data." Pam Parker, BLPHA Board Member and co-founder of Opponents of Ohio Bans asks "The problem is that this study, timed quite nicely to be released just as we have SB 120 introduced to exempt family owned bars in Ohio, has been widely distributed. If the data from this study is reexamined and finds that bars are hurt from smoking bans, will the researchers go to similar lengths to see that proper retractions are printed and headlined?"
President Obama's March 9, 2009 Memorandum said, "The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions." "I guess that doesn't apply when it's Tobacco Control and it hurts family owned bars. Imagine how our members feel that have been losing money since enforcement began, they're struggling to keep their doors open when they turn on the TV or read in the paper that a study says they're really not harmed by the ban. They're livid," said Carroll.
Related Web sites: www.thebarbiz.com and www.opponentsofohiobans.com
SOURCE Opponents of Ohio Bans
Source: PR Newswire
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