Richmond - With a 60 to 39 vote in the House and a 27 to 13 vote in the Senate, the Virginia General Assembly today passed a bill that will ban smoking in nearly all restaurants and bars across the Commonwealth beginning Dec. 1, making history in a state where tobacco was once king and where tobacco giant Philip Morris USA is headquartered.
“This is a major step forward for public health in Virginia,” said Delegate David Englin (D-Alexandria), who introduced the House version of a statewide smoke-free restaurants bill. “Today’s historic legislation is the result of years of hard work by public health advocates and a painstaking bipartisan effort this year in the House of Delegates.”
Englin noted that today’s victory for public health would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of Delegate Chris Jones (R-Suffolk), the new chairman of the House Committee on General Laws, who shepherded the bill through the House of Delegates despite opposition from the majority of House Republicans.
Governor Timothy M. Kaine and key leaders in the General Assembly announced Feb. 5 that they had finally come to an agreement to pass a statewide smoking ban in Virginia’s bars and restaurants, allowing very narrow exceptions for private clubs and for restaurants with designated smoking rooms that are completely walled off and independently ventilated from non-smoking areas. However, as the legislative process moved forward, pro-tobacco members of the House of Delegates amended the proposal to gut its core public health provisions.
The Senate rejected those House amendments, forcing the bill into a conference committee. The final conference committee report, which passed today, included several positive changes to the bill. In addition to restoring the original agreement, the conference report added amendments requested by the American Lung Association to further strengthen the public health aspects of the bill, and it added language to protect restaurant and bar workers.
“People who work in restaurants that allow smoking are twice as likely to develop lung cancer,” said Englin. “Especially in today’s economy, it is wrong to force restaurant workers to choose between their jobs or breathing cancer-causing second-hand smoke.”
Second-hand smoke is responsible for an estimated 1,700 deaths per year, according to the Virginia Department of Health. In addition, the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids estimates the Commonwealth spends $113 million a year on health care expenditures related to exposure to second-hand smoke.
While some advocates have expressed concern that the law passed today does not go far enough, data from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation indicates that Virginia will rank somewhere in the middle nationally among states that have passed legislation curbing smoking in restaurants. Moreover, Virginia will become the first Southern state to ban smoking in bars.
The following health advocacy groups support the legislation: American Academy of Pediatrics, Legislative Coalition of Nurses, Medical Society of Virginia, National Association of Social Workers, Psychiatric Society of Virginia, Virginia Academy of Family Physicians, Virginia Association of School Nurses, Virginia College of Emergency Room Physicians, Virginia Dietetic Association, Virginia Nurses Association, Virginia Society of Otolaryngology.
Twenty-three other states and Puerto Rico have already passed bans on smoking indoors at bars and restaurants. Maryland and the District of Columbia passed similar restrictions on smoking in restaurants in 2007 and 2006, respectively.
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