Dallas restaurant warns customers, ‘If you smell marijuana, we won’t serve you’

Tex-Mex restaurant E-Bar is a household name for its anti-tobacco policy, as reflected in a sign on its window: “If you smell marijuana on you, we won’t serve you.” (“Marijuana” is underlined for security.)

The signage has recently attracted attention, including in a story published Wednesday by the Dallas Observer.

But the restaurant’s owner, Ernie Quinlantan, told the publication that the policy has actually been enforced for five years. The Observer noted that sometimes “when the windows are being cleaned, the sign is taken off and then put back in a place that isn’t quite so obvious.”

“People who reek of marijuana just ruin the experience of everyone around them. There’s no way you can eat well with someone who stinks that badly,” Quinlantan told the Observer.

Quinlantan also downplayed the importance of the rule, saying most customers are unaffected.

“Some people have a say, it depends on the person, but mostly it’s not a problem,” Quinlantan said.

However, the rule was not well received on social media. E-Bar’s Instagram account is full of announcements, including several posts reminding customers to wear a mask in restaurants. Another proudly presents an award that awarded E-Bar the best Tex-Mex restaurant in Dallas three years ago.

But the comment sections of many of the account’s posts are littered with sarcastic remarks and open anger against the rule.

“Congratulations on being the only one [Tex Mex] Restaurant to monetize Latino culture while belittling it by supporting stigmas rooted in cannabis’ association with the Latino community by calling it marijuana,” wrote one Instagram user. “Do you think none of your employees or family use cannabis?”

“Do you have a list of odor restrictions?” another commenter snapped, “Is the person sniffing customers also certified by the SCA (Sniffers Commission of America)?”

Of course, recreational cannabis is illegal in the Lone Star State, but things could change.

Last November, voters in five Texas cities approved ballot measures to decriminalize marijuana. In one of those cities, Denton, officials ignored the will of the electorate and in June “voted against passage of the ordinance that would have decriminalized marijuana.”

Polls show that a majority of Texans support lifting the marijuana ban.

A Dallas Morning News/University of Texas at Tyler poll last August found that 55% of registered voters in Texas support the legalization of adult-use cannabis.

According to the survey, 34 percent said they “strongly” support the legalization of adult recreational cannabis, and 21 percent said they only supported the change.

14 percent said they were simply opposed, with 21 percent saying they were “strongly” opposed. Another 9% said they neither supported nor opposed the idea.

So far, legalization efforts haven’t garnered much favor from Texas lawmakers in Austin. However, lawmakers have taken steps to expand the state’s medicinal cannabis program.

In April, members of the state House of Representatives signed a bill that would allow physicians to recommend medical cannabis over opioids as an option to treat chronic pain.

“The passage of this legislation will provide qualifying patients with a federally recognized opportunity to access therapy that has been shown to provide significant benefits,” the Texas chapter of NORML said at the time. “Medical cannabis is an objectively safer alternative to the medicines it could potentially replace. I urge my fellow Texans to express their support for this important piece of legislation and to reach out to their senators to further their support as the legislative process continues.”