Smoking Ban Backfires at Toledo's Lucas County Arena

Your 8,000-seat, brand-spanking-new venue -- home to the ECHL Toledo Walleye hockey team and welcoming host to performers ranging from rock bands to comedians to monster-truck drivers -- is gorgeous both inside and out. It provides covered skywalk access to and from a reasonably priced parking garage, includes plenty of well-located restrooms, is media-friendly and does a fine job of offering standard arena eats and treats.

It is also terribly unaccommodating to Toledo's law-abiding smokers.

When Ohio voters enacted a total indoor smoking ban in 2006, I am quite sure the measure's proponents did not intend that the ban should actually create more indoor second-hand smoke. But that is exactly what happens when smoking bans are coupled with other restrictive venue policies.

I attended the REO Speedwagon-Styx-38 Special concert on Feb. 28. Great show, by the way, although I suspect that REO Speedwagon's sound techs need a stern talking-to. Your place was near sell-out packed, almost entirely by a 35-and-up crowd -- not a surprise, of course, given this particular trio of acts.

For the most part, we aging rock music fans know how to behave ourselves in public. Though some number of us may have spent our earliest concert-going youth passing a Dutchie to the left-hand side, or at least watching it from a few rows away, we understand that times have changed. Heck, we even know we're supposed to hold up our backlit cell phones instead of actual lighters in tribute to rock ballads now. So we get it that our favorite indoor concert venues -- and even most of the outdoor ones -- prohibit smoking in the seats, concourses and, well, basically everywhere inside the venue's confines.

So why were so many people lighting up in the bathrooms this past Sunday night, filling at least four -- and probably several others, judging from my walk around the venue -- of them with clouds of cigarette smoke, to the certain disdain and ire of the non-smokers among us?

I'll tell you why.

There was no place else to do it.

Despite the fact that you have two lovely attached outdoor terraces, Lucas County Arena, neither was open and accessible to concert-goers. According to an arena event staff member, the terraces were inaccessible due to your "no re-entry" policy, though technically your terraces are part of your structure. To re-enter means a person would've had to have left in the first place.

I'll give you that a standard "no re-entry" policy is a reasonable one. Hand stamps and event bracelets translate to additional expenses and so does paying the personnel that would have to be stationed at re-entry doors to check for them. It isn't smart business to unnecessarily spend money; and moreover, you don't need people coming and going, doing who-knows-what out on the street during your event. I get it.

But no access to your terraces? That I don't get.

The old Toledo Sports Arena that you replaced had its own little attached concrete slab of a place for smokers to dash out for a quick break and get back in. Nationwide Arena, where the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets play, provides an open-air spot adjacent to its main concourse. Joe Louis Arena, where the Detroit Wings play, provides two areas for smoking and re-admittance.

No, people shouldn't smoke. Right. Smoking's bad.

And yes, most Lucas County Arena events last less than three hours or thereabouts, and perhaps smokers should just figure out how to refrain from smoking, period, during such a short amount of time.

But the facts are that this particular crowd you hosted on Feb. 28 did not refrain at all, and Ohio's indoor smoking ban was flagrantly violated. I know that Ohio is still working out the enforcement details of fines levied against business owners when patrons smoke indoors, but technically your management company, SMG, is at risk of such a fine when arena guests smoke in the bathrooms. Beyond that, non-smoking patrons are supposed be assured by our state's indoor smoking ban that they won't be subjected to second-hand smoke inside of any venue. They certainly don't need to wait an extra long time in the restroom line because several folks in front of them used a full five minutes in a stall to smoke a cigarette.

Open at least one of your terraces to smokers during future events, please. A vast majority of smokers will compliantly go outdoors to light up if given an outdoor place to do it. A single terrace upon which plenty of ashtrays have been placed -- so as to discourage people from stomping their cigarette butts out on the ground -- would only increase your post-event cleanup minimally.

More importantly, your beautiful facility would remain a welcoming entertainment destination for smokers and non-smokers alike.

Sources:

"Guest Services and Arena Policies," Nationwide Arena

"Policies," Joe Louis Arena/Olympia Entertainment

Jim Provance, "Ohio Plans to Appeal Smoking Enforcement Decision," Toledo Blade