HPD Issues First Smoking Law Citations In Years

For the first time in more than four years, a Honolulu police officer has issued tickets to bar patrons for breaking the statewide smoking ban.
The owner and employees of Kelley O'Neil's Irish pub and grill on Lewers Street in Waikiki said a police officer ticketed three of its customers for smoking in the bar on a Sunday in October, in response to another customer who called 911 to report them.
The statewide law that's been in effect since November of 2006 prohibits people from smoking in restaurants, bars and other workplaces.
Kelly O'Neil's and a few other bars follow the letter of the law by posting no smoking signs, but still allow their customers to smoke, in violation of the law.
These are the first citations police have issued since a police officer ticketed someone for smoking at a Chinatown bar nearly five years ago, right after the law took effect.
"From what I understand, they didn't know how to issue them, they don't know how to go to court with them and I believe each, the gentleman who was cited has had his case extended more than once, for their purposes, to try to figure out from their end what they're doing," said Bill Comerford, owner of Kelley O'Neil's and three other bars is head of the Hawaii Bar Owners' Association.
He said one of the customers ticketed is from Hawaii and the other two were visiting from Guam.
Comerford said his three customers were issued summons requiring them to go to court, when they should have just been able to pay a fine, sort of like a parking or speeding ticket.
"We're asking our tourists now if they are cited here, if they didn't show up for it, there would be a bench warrant. Would they come back again? I don't think so. There are problems in this law," Comerford said.
Comerford declined to identify the bar customers who were cited, but said the Hawaii man went to court and was ordered to pay a $100 fine.
It's unclear what the outcome is of the cases of the men from Guam.
Comerford said state health department officials have told him bar owners could also be ticketed under the law, but none of them have been cited yet, as far as he knows.
"Do you know anybody in the world who's gonna call the police on themselves, for somebody else's actions? It's ludicrous. But that's what the law is. That's what the rules are," Comerford said.
The state health department said it's still working out an enforcement agreement with the police department, five years after the smoking ban took effect, and more than one year after the rules for the ban were signed by former Gov. Linda Lingle.
"We feel that we can get the strongest possible enforcement through working with the local police and law enforcement issues," said Julian Lipsher, the program manager of tobacco prevention and education for the state Department of Health. "It was really meant to be a self-enforcing, self-policing kind of law."
After the ban took effect five years ago, the Health Department had to develop rules and regulations for the new law, working with lawyers at the state attorney general's office to do so. State health officials said rule making usually takes two years, but this process took nearly four years.
The health department held public hearings across the state and appeared three times before the state's Small Business Regulatory Review Board, which Lipsher said didn't like the new regulations.
Lipsher said health officials had to repeatedly meet with the board, "To provide clarification of what the law was about, and to provide explanation and development of rules and how they would affect small business."
Lingle, a Republican, signed the rules last August and they finally took effect Sept. 6, 2010, nearly four years after the smoking restrictions became law. Lingle was lobbied heavily by business leaders not to sign the law, according to opponents of the restrictions.