The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set a 2020 target for restaurants, bars and workplaces to be smoke free. North Carolina’s own smoking ban in restaurants and bars is a step in that direction, but that step puts it out of step with the state’s southern neighbors.
The CDC notes in a new report on smoking that the number of states, including Washington, D.C., that enacted some sort of a ban on public smoking increased from zero in 2000 to 26 in 2010. These restrictions include bans on smoking in restaurants, bars and workplaces, or some combination of the three. But the CDC also notes that there is a strong regional disparity in the bans. No southern state has a smoke-free law for all three venues. Indeed, with the exception of North Carolina, Louisiana and Florida, no southern state has any kind of smoking restrictions. The CDC says its national smoke-free target can be reached only if the South comes on board.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that second-hand smoke exposure results in an estimated 46,000 heart disease deaths and 3,400 lung cancer deaths among non-smoking American adults each year.
Delaware was the first state to implement a comprehensive smoke-free law, passing the legislation in 2002. New York followed in 2003; Massachusetts in 2004. While most of the states implementing such laws did so through the legislative process, Arizona, Ohio, South Dakota and Washington enacted theirs through ballot measures, meaning there was sufficient public support.
That North Carolina has any kind of smoking ban is a small feat by itself. Tobacco, while not having the same financial and political clout it once did, still carries significant weight in the state. The debate on legislation banning smoking in bars and restaurants stirred controversy in the 2009 legislative session. But ultimately, there was sufficient political and public support for the ban. If North Carolina — still a large tobacco producer and home to cigarette companies Reynolds American (NYSE:RAI) in Winston-Salem and Lorillard (NYSE:LO) in Greensboro — can pass smoking restrictions, perhaps other southern states can do so, too. In that regard, North Carolina could be a leader for the region.
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By Frank Vinluan
Frank Vinluan is the North Carolina Bureau Chief for MedCity News.More posts by Author
I have been a smoker for many years and i do respect non-smokers wishes to not be around smoking. But having my smoking rights taken from me when i am in a bar? I have worked in bars for years. Not very many times have i heard a non-smoker complain about the smoke. They respect our rights as well as we respect them. Many times when a non-smoker comes out with their friends that do smoke, they do not go to another area where people are not smoking. They stay right there with their friends. I smoke two packs a day but have slowed down in the bar scene when we are directed outside. The state being in a recession and not having money for this and that? Well, North Carolinay took probably millions of dollars out of their accounts from taxes on the cigarettes because people won't buy as much. So they lost money and made consumers and business owners of bars very upset. Why not just require smoke eaters in the bars and let them smoke freely like we have been doing since the beginning of time and quit trying to take control over people? The United States have helped free communist countrys then turn around and try to control their own country. Makes no since.
Here we go again....the government deciding how best to handle my own health....Look, I smoke and been smoking for 20+ years. I know its not good for my health but I should be the one to decide to stop, not the government mandating it or else I will be punished. I can agree some public places should be smoke free...I'm not against that. What I am against, is the same "government" that wants me to stop smoking is the same government that administered the Tuskegee Project. "Oh, its just a vaccine, it won't hurt you". These are the same people that received such a backlash against the Anthrax vaccine, they sent their soldiers and airmen overseas (into the Iraq Afghan wars) and mandated the service members take this vaccination. Now the observation period is underway. The results remain to be seen. And you think the government is telling me to stop smoking because they love and care for me?? I don't think so. There are always people in public that do or say or wear something that offends me. I accept this because I am in the public. But in the privacy of my own home, should someone offend me I can ask them to leave. But in public? If I smoke someone can ask me to leave?? How so? When your choices are controlled by the government, are you really a free society?
Laprade, you came all the way down from Canada to "enlighten the yokels" with your boilerplate spam? (Google this jerk for tens of thousands of links) Go home! Your kind of garbage doesn't go in America!
Require a large sign posted by the door that says smoking is permitted in this restaurant. I will avoid that restaurant like the plague.
Nonsmokers, like anyone else, have the right to choose to be in a smokeless or smoking environment. But how far does that right extend? Should it take priority over someone else's right to choose as well? Court houses, publicly-owned buildings and anywhere else an individual might be forced to go should be included in any smoking law. What should not be included are places located in or on private property, providing an individual is not compelled by law to frequent or work at that specific location.