ASH Quoted as RI is Close to Enacting Workplace Smoking Ban [06/21/04]

ASH Quoted as RI is Close to Enacting Workplace Smoking Ban [06/21-5]

Excerpts from: Rhode Island Close To Joining States With A Smoking Ban

By DAN PEARSON The Day [ 06/21/04]

First it was New York. Then Connecticut. Now Rhode Island too is trying to clear the air, as the Ocean State could soon become the next to impose a comprehensive smoking ban.

Unfair or not, the Rhode Island House of Representatives on Thursday voted 61-0 to pass legislation that would ban smoking in nearly every public place in Rhode Island, including bars, malls, health-care facilities, schools, public restrooms and public transportation waiting areas. The Senate must still approve the bill, which is now in its Committee on Health and Human Services.

If passed, the ban would take effect March 1, 2005. Bars, which have Class C liquor licenses, and nonprofit or charitable organizations with Class D licenses, such as Knights of Columbus or Veterans of Foreign Wars, that employ fewer than 10 people would have until Oct. 1, 2006, to comply.

The state's pari-mutuel facilities, Newport Grand and Lincoln Park, would not be held to the ban, but would be required to create non-smoking areas with separate ventilation systems in their bars and restaurants. Private and semi-private rooms in nursing and assisted-living facilities, smoking rooms in hotels, retail tobacco stores, smoking bars and stage performances in which smoking is a part of the theatrical production would not be regulated under the law.

Employers who violated the law would be fined $250 for the first violation, $500 for the second and $1,000 for each subsequent violation. The ban is supported by the American Lung and Cancer associations, the AFL-CIO, Ocean State Action and the Campaign for a Healthy Rhode Island. Massachusetts, where many towns ban workplace smoking, is also considering a statewide ban.

John Banzhaf III, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in Washington D.C., and a professor of public policy at George Washington University, said Friday that 12 states now ban smoking in restaurants, 11 in private workplaces and 12 in public buildings. Banning smoking in bars, which he called the “hardest nut to crack,” has occurred in six states.

He attributed the growing number of bans to increasing scientific evidence about the harmful impact of second hand smoke combined with the increasing social acceptance of a ban, which was first established in California, in 1998. The American Lung Association has found that secondhand smoke causes 38,000 deaths a year, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that second-hand smoke causes 3,000 deaths annually from lung cancer in non-smokers.

“When California did it, people said, ‘Well, California is full of health nuts. It will never work anywhere else,” said Banzhaf. “But nobody ever thinks of New York or Boston like that. And when Ireland adopted the ban, that really showed how widespread the movement had become.”

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