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Former Virginia AG critical of McGraw’s use of outside counsel
August 09, 2006
By Chris Dickerson – Statehouse Bureau
CHARLESTON – Virginia’s former attorney general has written an opinion piece in a Washington-based legal newspaper that criticizes the way West Virginia AG Darrell McGraw’s office appoints outside attorneys as special assistant AGs.
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February 24, 2006
Rosalind S. Helderman and Ann E. Marimow

Flirtations with smoking bans in Virginia and Maryland came to abrupt ends yesterday, as legislative panels in each state rejected bills that would have made restaurants and virtually all other public places smoke-free.

In Virginia, a House of Delegates subcommittee unanimously rejected a bill that had won Senate approval despite the state’s long-standing ties to the tobacco industry.

In Maryland, a House committee chaired by a Baltimore delegate whose downtown district is dotted with bars and taverns turned back a similar proposal by a narrow margin.

Health groups — including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association — lobbied extensively for the bans. Eleven other states have approved such prohibitions, as evidence mounted about the health risks of breathing secondhand smoke and more people stopped smoking.

Delegates in both states said that many business owners have prohibited smoking in response to customer demands but that those who wish to cater to smokers should be allowed to do so.

“The problem is, I want to have smoke-free restaurants and businesses. But in America, you don’t pass a law to tell a private business owner who is paying rent or mortgage payments what he can and can’t do in his own place,” said Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax).

The proposed ban attracted particular attention in Virginia, the nation’s No. 3 tobacco-growing state. The Senate’s narrow approval of the bill was interpreted by many as a sign of the loosening of the industry’s hold in a state that is home to the worldwide headquarters of Philip Morris.

The Senate sponsor, a Roanoke Republican, presented his measure as a public health necessity, arguing that science has proved the dangers of secondhand smoke.

“The bottom line is that we’re not talking about a smoker’s right to smoke indoors,” said Sen. J. Brandon Bell II. “We’re talking about my right not to breath in 4,000 chemicals and 60 known carcinogens that are associated with secondhand smoke.”

Many lawmakers had predicted a quick death in the Virginia House, which has a long history of rejecting measures its members say amount to government nannyism. The smoking ban failed its first legislative test in the body, dying in a six-member subcommittee of the General Laws Committee.

“This is the wrong way to go about forcing this on businesses,” Del. John A. Cosgrove (R-Chesapeake) said during the hearing. “People have to take some type of personal responsibility and not expect the state to do it for them.”

Under House rules, the subcommittee vote means the bill dies for the year unless the full committee’s chairman agrees the 22 members should hear the measure as well. In this case, Chairman Del. John S. “Jack” Reid (R-Henrico) said he does not intend to hold such a hearing. Bell said he was not surprised. “There’s always a resistance to change,” he said.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) has not been supportive of the measure either.

In Maryland, three counties — Montgomery, Talbot and more recently Prince George’s — have banned smoking. But efforts to extend the prohibition statewide failed yesterday for the fourth consecutive year when the measure fell two votes short in the House Health and Government Operations Committee.

Legislators in Annapolis were bombarded with e-mails, phone calls and petitions from representatives of both sides of the debate.

“People who walk these halls complain about the high cost of medical care, and here was a golden opportunity to do something about it,” Eric Gally, a lobbyist for the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association, said after the 11 to 11 vote. “Once again, we’ve taken a pass.”

Melvin Thompson, lobbyist for the Restaurant Association of Maryland, applauded the outcome as a sign that legislators had heard the message that “smoking bans are most damaging to smaller restaurants and bars.”

From the beginning, the bill sponsored by Del. Barbara A. Frush (D-Prince George’s) faced resistance from Democratic leaders of the General Assembly and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R).

Prospects for passage dimmed with the departure of John Adams Hurson (D) of Montgomery County, the former House health committee chairman who represented a jurisdiction that had passed a local ban. The new committee chairman, Del. Peter A. Hammen (D), represents an area of downtown Baltimore that he said is home to nearly half the liquor licenses in the city.

Ties to Maryland’s tobacco-growing past also appeared to play a role in the bill’s defeat. Missing from the vote yesterday was Del. Sue Kullen (D-Calvert), a Southern Maryland lawmaker whom health care lobbyists considered critical to the outcome. Kullen, who stopped by the committee room shortly before the vote, said she had a scheduling conflict with another hearing.

“We were trying to monkey around with the schedule, but it didn’t work out so well,” she said. “I had an excused absence.”

During a hearing on the bill last week, Kullen said the issue was a difficult one for legislators from more rural parts of Maryland.

“For me, it’s the tobacco legacy I’m wrestling with. It’s just not good to demonize the tobacco leaf,” she said. “But it does have health implications.”

After the committee meeting yesterday, Kullen would not say how she would have voted.

“I was leaning in favor of the bill,” she said, “but was still concerned about the effect on business.”

2/21/06
Judyth piazza

Activist sees bans on public smoking extending to outdoor areas

Only a few years ago it would have been unimaginable that Virginia’s State Senate would vote to ban smoking in bars, restaurants and other public places. But on February 13, in the U.S. state whose history and economy has been so closely tied to tobacco, and where tobacco industry giant Philip Morris is based, lawmakers in Richmond provided the latest evidence that Americans are losing their tolerance for what once was a symbol of their culture.

Although the measure is not expected to pass Virginia’s House of Delegates, 11 U.S. states have enacted laws banning smoking in indoor public places, including bars and restaurants. The group Americans for Non-smokers’ Rights reported at the end of 2005 that 39 percent of U.S. citizens now live in areas that “are covered by statewide or local laws limiting smoking.”

The issue, according to many anti-smoking activists, is not a desire to curtail the freedom of smokers, but rather to protect the health of nonsmokers.

Gone are Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man from their former prevalence on U.S. billboards, replaced by anti-smoking ads under terms of the 1999 tobacco settlement. And smoking has been forbidden on all domestic U.S. flights, and the majority of flights to and from the United States, because of efforts on the part of groups like Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), founded by professor John F. Banzhaf, who teaches and practices public interest law at the George Washington University Law School in Washington.

In an interview with the Washington File, Banzhaf said it is without question that the American public has changed its attitude toward smoking and tobacco.

“We are much less tolerant toward smoking. We are much more willing to ban smoking and to go far further than we would have only a few years ago,” he said.

Efforts to ban smoking have been developing since the early 1990s when research showed that secondhand smoke not only was an annoyance to nonsmokers, but actually was contributing to their death from lung cancer. Banzhaf said it now is also known that exposure to secondhand smoke can trigger a heart attack.

He said ASH serves as “the major nonsmokers rights organization in the United States” and as “a catalyst to bring and encourage legal and law-related actions to protect the rights of nonsmokers.”

Having achieved success in prohibiting smoking in many indoor public areas in several states and localities, ASH now also is targeting outdoor smoking in public places on the grounds that tobacco smoke is a “toxic air contaminant” along the lines of dangerous automotive and industrial air pollutants.

On January 26, the California Air Resources Board formally declared outdoor tobacco smoke to be a toxic air contaminant, an action which Banzhaf said would “trigger a complex legal mechanism … result[ing] in a lot more bans on smoking outdoors.” Indeed, the city of Calabasas, California, passed a comprehensive secondhand smoke control ordinance on February 15 that bans smoking virtually everywhere outdoors, including sidewalks, streets, restaurant patios and parking lots.

“The only place smoking is going to be permitted is what they call a few small ‘smokers’ outposts,'” he said, referring to small, well-marked areas that will be provided to smokers in some shopping malls.

Banzhaf said that within the next few years the majority of U.S. states will be “totally smoke free indoors,” with perhaps one or two that also have banned outdoor smoking, and speculated that the momentum would continue.

“The ultimate goal is to have a smoke-free society, by which we don’t mean that nobody will smoke, but it will be something like spitting which is not done politely in public,” he said. “We will not be tolerating it on public places, streets, outdoors or anywhere else.”

The smoking bans, in addition to protecting the health of nonsmokers, also are discouraging many young people from taking up the habit, as well as influencing others to give it up.

The bans “are not only making it more inconvenient to be a smoker, but they turn the smoking message on its head,” he said.

“We used to get the message from everybody from James Bond to the ads that smoking made you sexy and sociable and sophisticated. Today all those no-smoking sections and no-smoking signs are sending just the opposite message to the kids. Smoking makes you stinky and smelly, not sociable. That combined with higher taxes is what is driving down teen consumption,” he said.

As the number of adult smokers in the United States continues to fall, Banzhaf says popular influence and pressure on local city and state governments to enact smoking bans is now “the major factor” in the goal of achieving a smoke-free society.

Mary Beth Jackson
The Wytheville Enterprise
Saturday, February 18, 2006

When an expansion of the Virginia Indoor Clean Air Act passed the Senate on Monday, it passed without the support of Sen. W. Roscoe Reynolds, D-Va. He is one of four Democrats who jumped party lines to vote against it.

Sen. Phillip Puckett, D-Va., voted in favor of the bill in the final vote. He had originally voted against it.

The bill just escaped the Senate in a 21-18 vote. The legislation would prohibit smoking indoors in most buildings or enclosed areas frequented by the public. Exceptions would be made for specialty tobacco stores and hotel and motel rooms designated as “smoking” rooms. The Senate killed similar legislation in 2005.

The bill was sent Tuesday to the House, where it has been referred to the Committee on General Laws.

“I think it will get killed in the House,” Reynolds said.

He said he had three reasons for voting against the bill. First, he feels the market is already taking care of the issue by bar and restaurant owners making their own decisions about whether to allow smokers to light up.

Second, the bill charges the responsibility of enforcing the law to local authorities, of whom he says are already overloaded.

“Mark my words, there’s going to be problems,” he said. “There are going to be people going into police offices to complain about this.”

In West Virginia, where almost all counties have some type of smoking ordinance, enforcement of the law is left to local health departments, who don’t levy fines but seek to get businesses in compliance. Reynolds said that would have been more agreeable.

Finally, he says, it’s just none of the government’s business.

“Why should state law be that a person who wants to allow smoking in his restaurant can’t allow that?” Reynolds said. “This is clearly a long-reaching intervention by government into affairs people say they have no right to be there.”

He added, “No Republican should vote for this.”

Seven did; but Republicans cast 14 of 18 dissenting votes.

The legislation is now in the House, where it has been referred to the Committee on General Laws.

Delegate Anne B. Crockett-Stark, R-Wytheville, says she is reserving comment on the legislation until she examines it more closely.

“It causes me mixed feelings. I’m not a smoker,” she said, adding, “That does not alleviate me from having to think of others.”

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February 17th, 2006
Jonathan McGlumphy, regular columnist and president of the Libertarians at Virginia Tech

Recently something happened that few people could have ever dreamed: the Senate of Virginia passed a bill that would ban smoking in restaurants and bars, amongst other places. As of this writing, the bill (SB 648) has been communicated to the House of Delegates for consideration.

Some people argue that this is a health issue. A recent Collegiate Times editorial (“Va. smoking ban would clear air for all,” CT, Feb. 15) articulated as much: “Choosing to smoke is a personal decision made entirely on an individual basis….However, nonsmokers are the ones who suffer by being denied that choice every time they are forced to inhale secondhand smoke in a public establishment.”

Last I checked no one is ever forced to enter an establishment where smoking is currently allowed. Case in point: As I type this I’m sitting in the Rivermill, a restaurant that allows smoking, and I can see plenty of people around me doing so (not including myself). I am very well aware of the health risks associated with secondhand smoke, yet I made the choice to sit where I am. Could I have gone next door to Bollo’s or Gillie’s where smoking is not allowed? Yes. But I chose not to because I value the other aspects of the Rivermill over the alternatives.

Just as I choose to sit in a smoking environment, all other people can choose to not sit in a smoking environment. So to say that nonsmokers are “forced” to breathe secondhand smoke is like saying I’m “forced” to watch a TV show I don’t like.

Even if an establishment is open to the general public, it is still owned and operated by a private individual or company. Many Blacksburg restaurants are owned by individuals who invest large chunks of their time and money to make a living through their businesses. So who should make the decisions of how a business is run? The proprietors or the state?

Advocates of smoking bans will say that the “greater good” supersedes any private ownership rights. If we take that rationale one step farther, then there should be a law against establishments playing music over 85 decibels, the threshold at which hearing loss begins. After all, we have a right to be in an environment that is completely benign to our health, don’t we?

Another argument is that the government already regulates the food and water in restaurants, so why not the air? Government regulation and health standards for food and water are designed to protect consumers from unknown contaminants. However, tobacco smoke is a known contaminant, and people freely make the informed decision to smoke or not to smoke. Along the same lines, some business owners choose to allow it and some do not.

What will this ban do to businesses in Blacksburg? Some establishments would be unaffected by the smoking ban, while others would face a potential loss. Customers where smoking is currently allowed would have to go outside to smoke, giving them less time to actually spend money, which means less income for the business and its employees. The worst case would be a place like Shesha, which absolutely depends on indoor smoking to function. The proposed ban makes no such exception for them.

Those who smoke are told not to worry since they’ll still be allowed to do so in the privacy of their own homes. That may be true for now, but given the current trend, can anyone doubt that the ultimate goal is the complete prohibition of smoking?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating smoking any more than I would advocate any other dangerous activity. However, what adults do to their own bodies is nobody’s business so long as it does not harm anyone else. That’s why it is reasonable to not allow smoking in places where everyone has to go, such as courthouses and other government buildings. But again, nobody is required to go into a privately owned establishment.

If it seems far-fetched that complete prohibition is the ultimate goal, then let us look back at history. Alcohol prohibition was passed one state at a time years before the Volstead Act made it nationwide. Marijuana and other currently illicit drugs were vilified (using propaganda more than actual scientific evidence) over a long period of time before being made completely illegal. And like we’re hearing now from the smoking prohibitionists, it was for the “greater good” of society.

No one’s health is being affected against his or her will. Passing a blanket ban such as this will serve only as yet another infringement of property rights by the state. As such, it should be soundly rejected by the House of Delegates.

February 17, 2006
Maura O’Keefe

The Virginia Senate recently passed a bill which, if successful in the House of Delegates, would amend the current state Clean Air Act by prohibiting smoking in many indoor public places.

According to Courtney Hyres, legislative aid to Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, a chief proponent of the bill, the new legislation would significantly change current policy, as smoking in buildings is currently at the discretion of business owners.

“It’s banned in certain places but not across the board,” Hyres said. “[The bill] has broadened the current law. This bill would ban smoking in most public spaces, including restaurants and bars. Now, there are some exceptions.”

Bell supports the bill because it protects Virginia residents’ health, Hyres said.

“[Bell] had become convinced that the evidence of the harms of second-hand smoke on the public health had become so compelling that it was time Virginia took steps to protect its citizens,” Hyres said.

Gov. Tim Kaine, however, opposes the bill in its current form, according to press secretary Kevin Hall, since over the weekend, the bill changed from addressing smoking as a local issue to approaching it in the form of a state-wide mandate.

“The governor’s position is that this should be a decision made by business owners in consultation with their employees and customers,” Hall said.

According to Hall, Kaine has historically been in favor of allowing business owners to make decisions concerning smoking policy.

“Gov. Kaine’s Richmond law firm was one of the first major employers here in Richmond to implement a voluntary workplace smoking ban in the late 1980s,” Hall said.

In response to critics who say indoor smoking adversely affects one’s health, Hall said such critics can choose not to frequent businesses that allow smoking.

“The governor does not believe it’s the business of the state to dictate business owners’ smoking policies,” Hall said.

As politicians debate passage of the bill, local business owners are anticipating the potential affects the legislation may have on business.

“I feel like it’s a free country and [smoking] is not against the law, and it should be allowed in public places,” said Ashley Mauter, manager of O’Neill’s Pub.

Mauter recognized the effects of second-hand smoke and suggested an alternative to appease smokers and non-smokers.

“I think a better way to go about the situation is to have a smoke-free night at bars, instead of banning it altogether,” she said.

Mauter added that she does not believe passage of the bill would significantly decrease business.

February 16, 2006

At first blush, it seems so noble. I mean, who can argue against clean air?

Yet SB648 – Virginia’s no-smoking-almost-anywhere-but- in-the-privacy-of-your-car-or-house bill – is unnecessary.

This sweeping anti smoking measure passed the Virginia Senate and is headed for the House of Delegates. If, by some miracle, this bill is approved by the House, smoking would be banned almost everywhere in Virginia.

Bars, bingo parlors, pool halls and bowling alleys. All would have state-mandated unpolluted air.

Our elected officials think they’re looking out for us. They say they’re protecting us from second hand smoke. In reality, they’re treating us as if we’re stupid. At the same time, they reveal their own lack of faith in the free-market system.

Lawmakers apparently believe that non smokers aren’t smart enough to stay away from places that allow smoking. They seem to think we’re so dopey – a commonwealth of wheezing sheep, apparently – that we’ll continue to drop our hard-earned dough in filthy joints with ashtrays on every table, until the big guys in Richmond rush in and rescue us.

I dislike this proposed law almost as much as I dislike cigarette smoke.

This bill patronizes us. It assumes that Virginians are too timid to walk out of smoky restaurants and take our wallets with us. It also ignores that some activities – drinking, bowling and playing bingo, for instance – are voluntary. Those of us who don’t like the contaminated air that hangs heavy in bars, bowling alleys and bingo halls need not go in.

That said, laws that prohibit smoking in places people can’t avoid, such as hospitals, buses and state offices, are good public policy. Free market principles don’t apply to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

They do elsewhere, though.

A couple of years ago I wandered into a trendy restaurant at the Beach with a few friends. Once inside we found ourselves engulfed in a haze of blue smoke.

Did we stomp our feet and demand that everyone put out their cigarettes? Did we silently fume as our healthy lungs filled with second-hand smoke? Did we phone our elected representatives the next day, to whine and demand a new law?

No, no and no.

We told the manager that his place was too smoky. Then we left.

That’s the glory of living in a free country with restaurants on every corner. As long as you have a credit card you’ll never go hungry.

Yes, it would be a breath of fresh air if every public place were smoke-free. Here’s a prediction: Eventually they will be. With or without this new law.

The reason is simple. The percentage of Americans who smoke is in free fall. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 21.5 percent of American adults smoke.

That’s down sharply from 1965 when 41.9 percent of Americans lit up. Also down is the number of establishments that allow smoking. This is not a coincidence.

If a bar or restaurant wants to attract customers – and that would seem to be the objective – smart managers will try to attract the 78.5 percent of us who don’t smoke, rather than the 21.5 percent who do.

Yet, if a bar owner is content to serve a dwindling number of phlegmatic patrons doomed to die young, that’s his business. Just count me out.

Non smokers can help abolish smoky places by keeping themselves and their money out of them. It also helps to tell the manager you’re leaving, in pursuit of unpolluted air.

One by one, restaurants and bars are going smoke-free. Voluntarily. Patience, my non smoking friends. Eventually the world will be ours.

News researcher Jakon Hays contributed to this column.
Reach Kerry at (757) 446-2306 or at kerry.dougherty@cox.net.
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February 16, 2006

NOTHING’S WRONG with objecting to noxious cigarette fumes in a restaurant–or anywhere else. For non-smokers, the wafting odor can ruin the best of meals or plague a quiet conversation; secondhand smoke also poses health risks. Still, politicians and bureaucrats have no business dictating what should be private understandings between businesses and their adult patrons.
The Virginia legislature is considering SB648, an amendment to the Indoor Clean Air Act, and “draconian” is just one of the unflattering words that leap to mind. The proposed law, passed by the state Senate on a 21-18 vote, is now in the lap of the House Committee on General Laws. The bill is a decree written in broad strokes that would ban indoor smoking almost everywhere in the commonwealth. The forced retreat of the smoker to the confines of his own home proceeds apace.

Sponsored by Sen. J. Brandon Bell, a Roanoke Republican, SB648 would compel the owners of restaurants, bars, hotels, and other establishments to turn the smoking lamp permanently off. Eateries would no longer be allowed to designate smoking sections, apartment buildings would be forbidden from having common smoking areas, hotels would be forced to make 75 percent of their rooms smoke-free, and so on. Hooray for the goal of smoking cessation, but woe to all when Big Brother starts to meddle in voluntary commercial associations. He usually mucks up the job.

Whatever happened to the America of the free market? The benefits of laissez-faire–letting the marketplace adapt to customer desires, without heavy-handed state interference–have been proved many times. If Virginians want businesses to provide smoke-free environments, Virginians will tell them. And have. In Fredericksburg as elsewhere, many customers have taken their business to places whose ambience excludes a smelly atmosphere. Locally, the 2400 Diner is perhaps the most ready example of restaurants that have banned smoking. Change from the bottom up is preferable to dictation from the top down.

Even Big Tobacco has abandoned attempts to dispute the ill effects of cigarette smoking. But in life bad things abound–as do ways to avoid them and pursue healthier options. File all this under individual responsibility.

Feb. 14, 2006
Rosalind S. Helderman

RICHMOND, Va. – The Virginia Senate voted Monday to ban smoking in restaurants and virtually all other public places, an extraordinary sign of cultural change in a state that is home to the worldwide headquarters of Philip Morris and whose agricultural economy has been rooted in tobacco farming for almost 400 years.

The bill is unlikely to survive review in the House of Delegates. Yet its passage on the floor of the Senate — where smoking has never been formally banned and lawmakers lit up openly even until the late 1990s — signaled mounting popular support for smoking restrictions.

The chamber narrowly approved the measure after a short but intense debate over consumer choice and the public health risks of secondhand smoke.

Senate Bill 648, sponsored by a Republican from Roanoke, would make smoking illegal in all public workplaces with the exception of certain tobacco stores and offices. The prohibition would extend to bars, restaurants and bowling alleys.

“This is not about whether I prefer or do not prefer the smell of smoke,” said Sen. J. Brandon Bell II, the sponsor. “This is about public health. . . . The research has come forward over the years, and it’s shown us that secondhand cigarette smoke is a very insidious health problem.”

The American Cancer Society said the Senate vote is a dramatic victory in efforts to educate the public about the dangers of secondhand smoke.

“This shows that Virginia is ready to move its way to where the mainstream is on health issues,” said Keenan Caldwell, director of government relations for the group’s regional office. “People are starting to see, even in Virginia and other tobacco-growing states, that there is proven science about the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.”

Smoking limits gain popularity
Caldwell said the shift has come as lawmakers realize the growing popularity of smoking limits, especially in voter-rich suburbs. Radio ads paid for by the cancer society and several other health groups have been playing in Richmond and Virginia Beach for two weeks, urging residents to contact lawmakers to express support.

“It makes you really pay attention,” Bell said. “I may have reservations about increased regulations [on businesses], but this is something that people seem to want to be regulated.”

• More politics news

If the Virginia bill were to become law, public areas in virtually the entire Washington region could soon be smoke-free. The D.C. Council approved a restaurant ban, which is now under review by Congress. Likewise, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties have eliminated indoor smoking, and the Maryland legislature is contemplating extending the rules to workplaces statewide.

The Virginia ban would include banks, bars, educational facilities, health care facilities, hotel and motel lobbies, laundromats, public transportation, reception areas, retail food production and marketing establishments, retail services establishments, retail stores, shopping malls, sports arenas, theaters and waiting rooms. Hotels could also set aside no more than 25 percent of their rooms for smokers.

House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) promised to oppose the bill. Kevin Hall, spokesman for Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), said the governor also opposes a statewide ban. But, he said, “it’s a little soon for a veto threat.”

Philip Morris stands by:
Virginia is the nation’s third top tobacco-growing state, and the leaf remains the state’s second-most profitable crop. Sculpted wreaths of tobacco leaves ring the ceiling of the Senate chamber in the Capitol. And just a few minutes south of the statehouse, the Philip Morris Richmond plant produces about 700 million cigarettes every day. In the summer, the smell of processed tobacco often hangs in the air of the capital city.

For years in Richmond, a single word of opposition from Philip Morris lobbyists was enough to doom a proposed bill. But as in other states considering similar bans, the company this year took no public stand on the measure and declined to work against it. “We are currently reviewing the legislation,” said Jennifer Golisch, a spokeswoman for the company.

Instead, opposition has been spearheaded by the Virginia Hospitality and Travel Association, which represents restaurants. The group lobbied vigorously against an early version of the bill that would have given localities the ability to regulate indoor smoking, complaining that the option would lead to a patchwork of regulations and pit businesses in neighboring counties against one another.

So Bell moved forward with the statewide smoking ban and picked up enough support to pass the bill, 21 to 18.

Those who voted against the measure said the marketplace is already pushing many restaurants to ban smoking, without government regulation. They said businesses should have the right to cater to their customers.

“We’re talking about a legal product that’s licensed and sold in Virginia — that’s taxed and taxed and taxed,” said Sen. Charles R. Hawkins (R-Pennsylvania), who represents tobacco growers. “Now we’re saying we know better than people who operate their own businesses what they can do.”

Indoor smoking ban advances

Feb 13, 2006

The Virginia Senate approved legislation today that would make cigarette smoking illegal in most indoor public places, including restaurants.

A bill that would add new smoking restrictions to the state’s Clean Indoor Air Act passed the Senate by a 21-18 vote, after a vigorous debate. The bill now moves to the House of Delegates, where its prospects are uncertain.

Just one week ago, the Senate defeated the bill 20-18, but lawmakers later agreed to reconsider that vote so that its sponsor, Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, could propose amendments.

Bell’s original bill would have given local governments the option of restricting smoking in restauarants, but a lobbying organization for restaurant owners opposed that proposal, arguing that a statewide ban would be preferable to a patchwork of local laws. So Bell amended the legislation today to prohibit smoking in restaurants statewide.

Virginia Senate passes bill to ban smoking in restaurants

By LARRY O’DELL
Associated Press Writer
February 13, 2006

RICHMOND, Va. — Lawmakers meeting just a few miles from the headquarters of the world’s largest cigarette company advanced a bill Monday to prohibit smoking in all of Virginia’s restaurants, taverns and most other public, indoor places.

The Virginia Senate voted 21-18 to pass legislation expanding the state’s Indoor Clean Air Act, which has been on the books since 1990. The bill now goes to the House of Delegates.

“I would be pleasantly surprised if it goes all the way through,” said Anne Morrow Donley of the Virginia Group to Alleviate Smoking in Public, which vigorously lobbied for the less-restrictive 1990 law. “It’s time we had more protections for everyone.”

Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, said his measure is intended to shield Virginians from the potential cancer-causing effects of secondhand smoke. Even taverns would be smoke-free under his bill, which would ban lighting up in virtually all indoor venues except private homes, hotel rooms designated for smokers, specialty tobacco stores, tobacco manufacturers and public facilities hosting private functions.

“This is about the rights of the nonsmoker not to be exposed to this for health reasons,” Bell told his colleagues.

Such arguments against public smoking have traditionally been a hard sell in Virginia, the nation’s fourth-biggest tobacco producing state and home of Richmond-based Philip Morris USA, the world’s top cigarette maker. Philip Morris spokeswoman Jennifer Golisch said the company is reviewing Bell’s legislation.

Kevin Hall, spokesman for Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, said the governor believes restaurant owners should be free to decide whether to ban smoking.

Sens. Charles Hawkins and Frank Ruff, whose districts are in the heart of Virginia tobacco country, led the opposition to the bill.

“What we’re doing today is managing people’s businesses,” said Hawkins, R-Pittsylvania. “This has nothing to do with clean air. The marketplace has already taken care of that. There are all types of places you can go without smoking. What this does is close options for those who choose not to be in that sort of environment.”

But Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, argued that restricting smoking is akin to regulating restaurants’ storage and handling of food to protect public health.

“This doesn’t have a thing to do with property rights,” Saslaw said. “We have a right and an obligation to protect people from a health menace or a health danger.”

Currently, 18 states prohibit smoking in restaurants, according to GASP, and 12 of those states ban smoking in all other workplaces.

Under Bell’s proposal, violators who continue to smoke after being warned could be fined $100 for a first offense and $250 for subsequent offenses. Proprietors of establishments failing to comply could be fined $200 for a first offense and $500 for additional violations.

The Senate defeated the bill by a 20-18 vote today, but moments later lawmakers unanimously agreed to reconsider the legislation at the request of its sponsor, Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County. Further debate on the bill was postponed for at least another day.

The legislation would prohibit smoking in most indoor public places, but it would give local governments the option of restricting smoking in restaurants. Some business groups, including the Virginia Hospitality and Travel Association, have opposed that proposal, arguing that a statewide ban would be better than a patchwork of local laws.

Bell said he may offer an amendment that would make smoking illegal in restaurants statewide rather than allowing a local option.

See tomorrow’s Times-Dispatch for more news from the Virginia General Assembly.

Smoking Ban in Va. Advances
Most Public Buildings Would Be Affected
By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
February 4, 2005