The Anti-Smoking Movement

Headlines for the past few years frequently address measures by town council's, city aldermen, county commissions or even state legislatures to outlaw smoking in different public areas. These efforts have been successful in many areas. For example, California makes it tough to smoke in many public places. In New York City, forget smoking in bars and restaurants, Washington, DC has outlawed smoking in bars and restaurants; Chicago is presently considering a similar ban. Some other countries have completely banned smoking in public places. The bottom line is that the movement is gaining steam, lots of it, and the anti-smoking movement will continue to roll. There are critics of these laws and the anti-smoking efforts, but for them, it may be too little, too late.

More than a decade ago, California 's anti-smoking laws went into effect. The result was that you could no longer smoke in most public places. Since then, California 's laws have become even tougher. Under the initial law, smoking was prohibited within 5 feet of the entrance to a public building. Under the state's new 2004 law, smoking is prohibited within 20 feet of the front of the building unless the smoker is walking. However, by the time the state of California passed the law, many cities and counties in the state had already passed laws more restrictive than the state law. The current 2004 law also allows other jurisdictions and institutions in the state the ability to make the anti-smoking laws more restrictive.

In New York City , you can't smoke in any restaurant or bar. The primary focus of this law, the California and laws in other cities such as Boston , is to protect not only patrons, but employees from second hand smoke. When these laws began to first be proposed and brought before the legislatures and various other governmental bodies, the cries and protest from restaurant and bar owners were that if smokers were prohibited from smoking, then their business would suffer. Patrons would stay away, owners would lose profits, the establishments would close and the economy would suffer. Funny thing is, this hasn't happened.