In the drab tobacco lounge at San Francisco's largest office employer, the nicotine addicts puff and reminisce about the days when they could light up at their desks. That was before the city's precedent-setting smoking ordinance took effect and a non-smoker complained. Result: no smoking allowed anywhere on the sales floor, where 100 Pacific Bell Telephone Co. employees work. Smokers now have to sneak cigarettes in the stairwells and bathrooms or retreat to the claustrophobic smoking lounge. "I hate this room," said telephone sales representative Michelle Falls as she lit another cigarette. "There are no windows, no couches. It's like the dungeon for the doomed." "Before, you could light 'em up, let 'em burn on the job," added Dianna Brock, also of Pacific Bell. "Now you have to leave the room (the main office area) to smoke. It's discriminatory." Outside the smoking den, no one seems to be listening to the complaints of Falls, Brock and fellow smokers, whose rights now are secondary to those of non-smokers under San Francisco's smoking ordinance, the toughest workplace cigarette regulation in any big city in the nation when it was adopted 21 months ago. "The air quality here is now better," said Barbara Griffin, another Pacific Bell worker and former smoker who credits the ordinance with helping her quit. "I can't say that it is fair to smokers, but all of us are aware of the fact that smoke is not good for human beings." The law that keep Falls and Brock segregated in the cigarette den has been hailed as a model for other locales in California and around the country trying to regulate smoking. Florida last year adopted a similar law, requiring employers to establish policies to divide work areas into smoking and non-smoking sections based on the ratio of smokers to abstainers. Smoking areas cannot exceed half of the total public areas of each business. The law, which took effect last Oct. 1, pre-empted local ordinances on smoking. Proponents of smoking ordinances say San Francisco has shown that workplace cigarette laws are remarkably easy to enforce because employers would rather comply than face fines and the publicity that accompanies a violation case. Although the San Francisco law provides fines of up to $500 per day for employers who fail to comply, the city has yet to levy a single penalty. Instead of creating a squad of cigarette police, the law required only one health inspector to handle complaints, which were dribbling in at the rate of a few each month. From March 1984, until Jan. 15, only 195 complaints had been filed with the city. The one health inspector assigned to smoking ordinance enforcement now spends only 10 percent to 20 percent of his time on the cigarette complaints. "Initially, I spent more time talking to the press than handling complaints," said Bruce Tsutsui, the cigarette-smoking city health inspector in charge of enforcing the ordinance. "Most of the complaints we get are pretty simple to handle. I haven't met any resistance from managers." About half of the 195 complaints have resulted in creation of nonsmoking sections in offices where smoking previously was allowed. "I think the law has changed the workplace," Tsutsui said. "In a few years, most of the offices in the city will be non-smoking." Encouraged by San Francisco's record, cities and counties throughout the state began adopting similar laws. Today, more than 11 million Californians are subject to city or county ordinances regulating smoking in the workplace. Californians for Non-smokers Rights, the organization that spearheaded the campaign to regulate cigarettes in offices, restaurants and public places, now consults and advises non-smokers organizations from Florida to Australia. Based in a low-rent office in Berkeley, that organization now finds itself riding a wave of support for smoking regulations. "Twenty years ago, you couldn't ask a smoker not to light up or to step outside," said Mark Pertschuk, associate director of Californians for Nonsmokers' Rights. "It was like telling Humphrey Bogart to step outside. San Francisco helped pave the way for change." But the tobacco lobby, which spent $1.2 million on an unsuccessful campaign to overturn the San Francisco ordinance in a city election, suggests the claims made by non-smoking advocates are overblown. "It's trendy to say there's a trend," said Scott Staph, assistant to the president of the Tobacco Institute in Washington, D.C. "But look at where the regulations are. Two-thirds of the laws are in California. That's hardly an argument for a national trend." Staph also doesn't see San Francisco's record of enforcement as a testament to the remarkable ease of regulating cigarettes in the private offices of a major city. Instead, the San Francisco law demonstrates how easily such ordinances can be ignored, Staph said. "It's very obviously not being enforced," Staph said. "That's actually a good thing, considering the severe penalties. The argument that I find comical is that since the city doesn't get a lot of complaints, the law is working. If they're not getting a lot of complaints, it's because the law is not being enforced." Further, Staph said there has been no noticeable drop-off in California cigarette sales following the adoption of ordinances in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and elsewhere in California. Californians did smoke slightly fewer cigarettes last year than the year before, but consumption had been gradually declining long before the ordinances came about. Staph's comments represent a departure from the tobacco lobby's position when it campaigned to overturn the San Francisco law. Cigarette interests argued in that campaign that a city smoking ordinance would be expensive to administer and would divert attention from other important issues. The first academic review of the law, conducted by two University of California medical doctors, Michael J. Martin and Mervyn F. Silverman, seems to support both sides in the continuing controversy over smoking regulations. The study reviewed the first year of operation under the smoking ordinance, and found a shortage of complaints, an absence of fines, and no additional costs to the city. "The most noteworthy findings presented here relate to the ease with which the San Francisco ordinance regulating smoking in the workplace was implemented and maintained," the study concluded. But the study also noted that the question of compliance remained unanswered. No reviews of employer compliance have yet been conducted, and the study said more research is needed to determine if the ease of implementation was in fact related to lax enforcement.

Indeed, there are few rules governing how employers are to structure their office under the new ordinance, which simply requires that the needs of smokers and nonsmokers be taken into account. In the event of unresolved conflicts, the interest of the non-smokers must prevail, the ordinance stipulates. Thus, if a non-smoker complains to the city demanding cigarette- free environment, the employer must provide it or face a fine. But if there are no complaints, no changes are required. Thus, employers in San Francisco have taken widely different approaches to dealing with the new laws. At Pacific Bell, largest employer in the city with almost 15,000 workers, a company smoking policy already was under consideration when the city ordinance came about. The company conducted a survey of its workers and found that about one-third smoked. Of the non-smokers, eight of 10 said smoke bothered them at work. Interestingly, smokers were well aware of the discomfort their cigarettes caused for fellow workers who didn't smoke and were willing to submit to regulation, while non-smokers remained a little timid about forcing cigarette rules in the office. Three-fourths of the smokers said the company should regulate smoking in the workplace, while only 57 percent of non-smokers were in favor of sanctions against cigarettes. When the San Francisco ordinance took effect, Pacific Bell set up broad guidelines for the company and gave each department some measure of choice in deciding on specific solutions. In a number of cases, the result was a ban on smoking in entire departments, and sometimes the creation of designated smoking places such as the lounge where Falls and her smoking co-workers now go to light up. A smoker's lounge similar to the one at Pacific Bell now exists at the Bank of America, as well. That room was created when an employee, unhappy with the smokers in her section, filed one of the few complaints to the city. Bank of America reports that the ordinance caused very few other problems for the company. "Everybody here has found the ordinance livable," said Bank of America spokesman Peter Magnani. At the California Automobile Association office in San Francisco, where about 1,000 people work, a few non-smoking sections were created after the ordinance took effect, and the company provided desk-top smoke filters in some areas where smokers and non-smokers worked side by side. No major reorganizations or changes were needed. "It was almost like the ordinance didn't even exist," said Tom Rohner, automobile association spokesman. "We didn't have any problems before the ordinance. We didn't have any after it was enacted." Outside Rohner's private office, smoker Nancy Ebert works in the middle of a row of non-smoking clerks. She still lights up at her desk, but now the fan in her desk-top smoke filter removes some of the impurities that blow toward her co-workers. "I was wondering what would happen with the ordinance," Ebert said. "But it's been business as usual." But Ebert and other smokers recognize things can change fast under San Francisco's smoking law. In the drab tobacco lounge at San Francisco's largest office employer, the nicotine addicts puff and reminisce about the days when they could light up at their desks. That was before the city's precedent-setting smoking ordinance took effect and a non-smoker complained. Result: no smoking allowed anywhere on the sales floor, where 100 Pacific Bell Telephone Co. employees work. Smokers now have to sneak cigarettes in the stairwells and bathrooms or retreat to the claustrophobic smoking lounge. "I hate this room," said telephone sales representative Michelle Falls as she lit another cigarette. "There are no windows, no couches. It's like the dungeon for the doomed." "Before, you could light 'em up, let 'em burn on the job," added Dianna Brock, also of Pacific Bell. "Now you have to leave the room (the main office area) to smoke. It's discriminatory." Outside the smoking den, no one seems to be listening to the complaints of Falls, Brock and fellow smokers, whose rights now are secondary to those of non-smokers under San Francisco's smoking ordinance, the toughest workplace cigarette regulation in any big city in the nation when it was adopted 21 months ago. "The air quality here is now better," said Barbara Griffin, another Pacific Bell worker and former smoker who credits the ordinance with helping her quit. "I can't say that it is fair to smokers, but all of us are aware of the fact that smoke is not good for human beings." The law that keep Falls and Brock segregated in the cigarette den has been hailed as a model for other locales in California and around the country trying to regulate smoking. Florida last year adopted a similar law, requiring employers to establish policies to divide work areas into smoking and non-smoking sections based on the ratio of smokers to abstainers. Smoking areas cannot exceed half of the total public areas of each business. The law, which took effect last Oct. 1, pre-empted local ordinances on smoking. Proponents of smoking ordinances say San Francisco has shown that workplace cigarette laws are remarkably easy to enforce because employers would rather comply than face fines and the publicity that accompanies a violation case. Although the San Francisco law provides fines of up to $500 per day for employers who fail to comply, the city has yet to levy a single penalty. Instead of creating a squad of cigarette police, the law required only one health inspector to handle complaints, which were dribbling in at the rate of a few each month. From March 1984, until Jan. 15, only 195 complaints had been filed with the city. The one health inspector assigned to smoking ordinance enforcement now spends only 10 percent to 20 percent of his time on the cigarette complaints. "Initially, I spent more time talking to the press than handling complaints," said Bruce Tsutsui, the cigarette-smoking city health inspector in charge of enforcing the ordinance. "Most of the complaints we get are pretty simple to handle. I haven't met any resistance from managers." About half of the 195 complaints have resulted in creation of nonsmoking sections in offices where smoking previously was allowed. "I think the law has changed the workplace," Tsutsui said. "In a few years, most of the offices in the city will be non-smoking." Encouraged by San Francisco's record, cities and counties throughout the state began adopting similar laws. Today, more than 11 million Californians are subject to city or county ordinances regulating smoking in the workplace.