Smoking around other people --

increases:

For more information, please see the links below.

2008 Virginia legislative efforts, 
and the fallout from that onto the Norfolk Virginia City Council which has gone from supporting smoking bans in Norfolk restaurants (October, 2007) to huge exceptions that only a tobacco executive could support.  On the evening of March 25, 2008, the Norfolk City Council voted to get rid of the proposed smoking ban.  BUT, in April 2008, they will consider revised plans to allow restaurants to allow smoking if they pay the city $1,000 a year -- Legalized "Opium dens"?  Does this open the restaurants to even more liability from employee lawsuits?

 2008 Legislation was blocked by chief dictator Speaker of the House William Howell and willing servant Chairwoman Terrie Suit and their six  little dictators in the subcommittee:  Thomas Gear, David Albo, Thomas Wright, John Cosgrove, Watkins Abbitt, Danny Bowling. 

    -- the current law
    -- Excerpts of news articles re. restaurants and other workplaces

Secondhand Smoke hurts and kills

Some Smoke-free Restaurants list

Canada -- Provinces and Territories that are smoke-free:

States in the USA -- smoke-free restaurant laws, most have far more than restaurants smoke-free:

Additionally:  Washington, D.C.; Guam, Puerto Rico

Ban on smoking in restaurants

Attempts to pass smoke-free restaurant legislation in

EXCERPTS from  The Denver Channel, Colorado, March 15, 2007, headlined:  March Madness Has Different Smell This Year, writer Tyler Lopez.

Sports lovers can root for their favorite team without the haze of cigarette smoke.

Eight months into Colorado's statewide smoking ban, patrons and staffers say it's changing the look of the "sports bar" at this popular time of year for the hoop-addicted.

"We sold about 15 percent more food at the restaurant, which is a pretty significant increase for any restaurant, I would think," said Matthew Brown, 
manager of the Cherry Cricket in Cherry Creek North.

"A lot more families (are) coming in now. Which, sometimes smoking would curtail the families from coming in in the past. And so, it's a welcome 
environment for everybody now. (It's) Not just the bar crowd."

Parents seem to agree.

"Honestly, yeah I feel a lot more free to go pretty much anywhere," said Tracy Hughes

Staffers said that tips have remained steady as food sales have risen. 

Strange Bedfellows: The History of Collaboration between the Tobacco Industry and the Massachusetts Restaurant Association

By Wendy RIch and Mike Begay; Available at the UCSF Library Tobacco Control Archives web site.

This and other information may be searched at:  http://repositories.cdlib.org/ctcre/

Objective:  To examine the historical relationship between the tobacco
industry and the Massachusetts Restaurant Association (MRA), a nonprofit
trade association for the food and beverage industry.

Design:  This study analyzed web-based tobacco industry documents, MRA
Federal tax returns, public relations materials, news articles, testimony
from public hearings, requests for injunctions, court decisions, economic
impact studies, handbooks, private correspondences, and public records.

Results:  Tobacco industry documents that became public after various state lawsuits reveal that a long and productive history of collaboration exists between the MRA and the tobacco industry.  For more than twenty years, they have focused primarily on efforts to defeat state and local laws that would restrict smoking in public places, particularly in beverage and food service establishments.  The resources of the tobacco industry, combined with the MRA's grassroots mobilization of its membership, have accounted for their successful opposition to many state and local smoke-free restaurant, bar, and workplace laws in Massachusetts.

Conclusion:  The universal opposition of the Massachusetts Restaurant
Association to smoking bans in food and beverage establishments is a
reflection of its historic relationship with the tobacco industry.  This is
contrary to public statements made by the MRA that it is working
independently of the interests of Big Tobacco.  State and local lawmakers,
as well as local boards of health, must realize that when the MRA opposes
state and local smoke-free legislation it does so primarily because it has
been and continues to be a close political ally of the tobacco industry.
 

Since the city banned smoking in restaurants in 1995, restauranteurs have complained that the prohibition is bad for business. On Monday, a group of academic researchers, admittedly anti-smoking ones, released a series of six analyses suggesting that the ban has not hurt.

The studies indicated that the anti-smoking law, which took effect on April 10, 1995, has had no
effect on local sales, job growth or income. The studies, which were financed by the Substance
Abuse Policy Research Program, which receives money from the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, showed that restaurant industry jobs rose 18 percent from 1993 to 1997, to 19,347.

During the same period, sales tax receipts rose 2 percent at restaurants in the city but dropped 4
percent in the rest of the state. The number of restaurants in the city during that period increased 6 percent.

At a news conference, the researchers characterized their work as the first comprehensive look at
the city's ban on smoking in restaurants with 35 or more seats. They said earlier studies suggesting
economic harm were smaller and were financed by the tobacco industry.

"Local officials can now go about their business of protecting the public from the toxins in
second-hand smoke without worrying about this phony issue," said Dr. Stanton Glantz, who wrote
an editorial accompanying the articles, which are published in the January issue of Public Health
Management and Practice.

Mike O'Neal, who owns O'Neal's restaurant on West 64th Street, near Lincoln Center, supported
the ban, saying it has helped his business. "If 75 percent of people don't smoke and 25 percent do,
that means 75 percent are going to eat out more and 25 percent are going to eat out less," he said at
the news conference.

Others in the restaurant industry took sharp issue with the studies' methodology and conclusions.
Scott Wexler, executive director of the Empire State Restaurant and Tavern Association, a trade
group, said in an interview that his group sponsored a study in 1996 that showed jobs at city
restaurants declining 4 percent.

The restaurant trade group is heavily supported by the Tobacco Institute, which recently admitted
funneling $443,072 to the group, after earlier claiming a far lower amount. The money was used to
lobby the state Legislature for less stringent laws than the city's.

Excerpts from  U.S. Newswire, January 11, 1999, titled, "Studies Find Massachusetts' Smoke-Free Ordinances Having No Significant Effect on Restaurant Revenue", Contact: Prabhu Ponkshe, 703-288-4325, or Ellen Wilson, 301-652-1558, ext. 108

The studies were funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation- supported Substance Abuse
Policy Research Program and published in the January issue of The Journal of Public Health
Management and Practice. This month's issue of the Journal is devoted entirely to studies that look at the various aspects of smoke-free laws in public places.

Based on taxable meal receipts submitted by restaurants to the Massachusetts Department of
Revenue before and after the imposition of local smoke-free ordinances in the state, the study shows
that, on average, restaurant revenue in smoke-free towns rose four percent. Restaurant revenues in
the communities that did not severely restrict smoking over the same time period rose only two
percent.

For the study, "The Economic Effect of Smoke-Free Restaurant Policies on Restaurant Business in
Massachusetts," the researchers estimated changes in sales over time rather than comparing meal
sales in towns at one given time. By pooling towns into two groups -- those that had smoke-free
policies (32 towns) and those that didn't (203 towns) -- the researchers were able to compare total
per capita taxable meal revenue for each group from January 1992 through December 1995.
Drawing a trend line for each group of towns, they found no divergence between the two groups of
communities. The researchers called a community smoke-free if a diner could eat anywhere in the
community without being exposed to second-hand smoke.

"After controlling for seasonal trends, population and disposable income, our models failed to find a
statistically significant effect of local, smoke-free policies on restaurant business," said study author
William J. Bartosch, M.P.A., an analyst with the Center for Health Economic Research in Waltham,
Mass.

In recent years, an increasing number of Massachusetts communities have adopted restaurant
smoking policies. Between 1981 and 1998, more than 139 cities and towns across the state -- out
of a total of 351 -- have enacted some type of smoking restriction for restaurants. Local enactment
activity has been particularly noticeable since 1993, when the state increased its excise tax on
cigarettes by 25 cents and used the proceeds to establish the Massachusetts Tobacco Control
Program (MTCP), a state-wide initiative to reduce tobacco-related health risks. Last October,
Boston implemented a public health regulation similar to New York City's Smoke-Free Air Act.

According to sources cited in the study, opposition to the local policies has come from the restaurant and tobacco industries, which have argued that the restaurant business would be harmed. "The results of our study seem to question the validity of these claims," said study author Gregory C. Pope, M.S., vice president and senior scientist at the Center for Health Economics Research.

The researchers also gathered separate data on restaurants that serve alcohol, allowing the study to make a comparison to restaurants that do not serve alcohol. "Because studies show that people who smoke heavily also tend to drink heavily, one might expect that restaurants that serve alcohol would be disproportionately affected by smoke-free policies," Bartosch noted. "But this was not the case."

In a related study, "Local Restaurant Smoking Policy Enactment in Massachusetts" -- also published
today in The Journal of Public Health Management and Practice -- Bartosch and Pope conclude that
there is more support for smoke-free policies in white-collar communities than in those with a higher
proportion of blue-collar workers.

Another study published in the Journal -- "Smoky Bars and Restaurants: Who Avoids Them and
Why?" -- reports that almost one half of the non-smoking respondents to a survey of 5,000
Massachusetts residents had resisted going somewhere in order to prevent exposure to second-hand smoke. Healthy people and those with college educations were more likely to report avoiding smoky places than those with less education and those who perceive themselves as less healthy.

"Most of the time, those who avoided smoky places said they did so because they didn't like the
lingering smell of smoke in their clothes and hair," said study author Lois Biener, Ph.D., senior
research fellow at the Center for Survey Research at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
"The second most cited reason was out of concern for their health, and the places they said they
usually avoided were restaurants and bars."