Your headline, "Smoking bans won't make bars restaurants hand out pink slips" is completely incorrect: you read the press release on the study but you didn't read the study itself.

The authors very deliberately and specifically, right in line with their grant application for 516,568 dollars to produce the "right" results in their research for the antismoking group that funded it, did NOT examine bar employment separately from the 10x larger restaurant employment. In reality the bar industry was literally DECIMATED by the smoking bans in Minneapolis and St. Paul - the two largest and only named cities studied.

To see the full story behind it read Jacob Grier's May 27th column and the comments you will be disgusted. This "study" wasn't science: it was bought-and-paid-for politics pure and simple.

Michael J. McFadden,
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"