Dozens of restaurants and hookah lounges in Dearborn and throughout the region could struggle to stay open after the state smoking ban that Gov. Jennifer Granholm was expected to sign Friday goes into effect May 1.

A Mangos Cafe customer smokes argeela on the restaurant/hookah bar’s crowded patio last summer. PHOTO: Nafeh AbuNab

The law prohibits smoking in all but a few exempted workplaces.
It allows smoking in hookah lounges as “tobacco specialty retail stores,” but only if no food or drinks are served on the premises.

Many Middle Eastern restaurants serve hookahs and rely heavily on customers who smoke them while drinking tea or eating, often late into the night.

More commonly known as “argeela” among local Arab Americans, hookahs are water pipes that heat tobacco, smoked through long hoses.

“It is going to be tough, for sure,” said Tarek Fahs, owner of Mangos Cafe, a popular Dearborn restaurant on Warren Avenue. “It is going to affect us big time. Things were going very well, and we were bringing in customers from outside Dearborn. So now I don’t know.”

Fahs had hoped to at least still be able to serve argeela on the restaurant’s patio, which often overflowed with customers over the summer, despite the recession.

But the law bans smoking even on outdoor premises of any establishment that serves food, according to a representative from state House Rep. Gino Polidori’s office.

Polidori’s legislative director Tim Sneller said the version of the law that was ultimately passed does not allow for any blending — an establishment that serves argeela must be totally separate from any restaurant or other business.

Sneller said Polidori, who represents Dearborn, initially made sure there was language more accommodating to hookah lounges in earlier versions of the bill, but that the Senate made changes that now allow only cigar bars to continue to serve food and drink, if at least 10 percent of revenue comes from cigar sales. Only cigars — not even cigarettes — can be smoked inside those businesses.

He said too much public pressure to pass the ban had mounted by the time the Senate passed its version for Polidori to go back and fight for more changes.

“This did frustrate him about the hookah bars,” Sneller said. “But we did what the public asked for.”

Sneller said 28,000 mailings were sent to Dearborn registered voters before the bill was passed asking for opinions on the ban, and that of about 1,000 respondents, about 90 percent supported a smoking ban, including in bars and restaurants.

Fahs said he plans to open a separate hookah lounge near his restaurant, but he worries about how to lure in customers without offering tea or food.

“Nobody comes in just for the argeela,” he said. “If people were going to come to smoke argeela and can’t munch on anything, they would do it at home.”

The bill, HB4377, can be found and read in its entirety at legislature.mi.gov.