[News] Restaurant Association Will Support Statewide Smoking Ban … of a Fashion
The Clarion-Ledger is reporting:
The Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association says it will support a bill for a statewide smoking ban, in part, because it would allow smoking in age-restricted bars with closed-off areas. It also would prohibit new municipal bans, helping give all restaurants a level playing field. Given the current national trend ? which has communities adopting more and more anti-smoking measures ? the head of the association said it is better to look at a statewide bill now than deal with dozens of municipal bans. ?Given the current political climate, it?s in our best interest to look at a state ban,? said Mike Cashion, the association?s executive director. [...]
The smoking ban bill would amount to a compromise in which virtually every restaurant would be smoke free, but would have the option of closing off bar areas where customers could light up, Cashion said. [...]
The legislation also says that if a restaurant owner is following the law, he or she cannot be held responsible if a customer lights up in a smoke-free area.
Posted by ladd at 06:37 PM in Legislature, Healthcare, Tobacco, MS Newspapers, News | Email this entry
Comments:
What seems funny to me about their compromise?besides the fact that bar employees and non-smokers will still have to breathe second-hand smoke?is that Mississippi requires all bars to serve food in order to serve alcohol. So now they want to make it a separate thing? If they do this, they also need to relax the laws that requires food to be served?being that you won’t be able to serve it in a bar area where smoking is allowed.
Also, does this mean that all bars will have non-smoking sections?
Posted by on 01/15 at 07:42 PM | #
What it means, as I read it, is that as long as the barowner has everything in order, a vigilante smoker can sit whereever and pollute as he likes.
No. Ban it regardless.
Posted by on 01/15 at 09:05 PM | #
Yeah, I kinda read it that way, too.
Posted by on 01/15 at 09:09 PM | #
