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Home > What's New > SMOKING BAN—WITH EXCEPTIONS—PASSED IN CHICAGO
SMOKING BAN—WITH EXCEPTIONS—PASSED IN CHICAGO
Posted: Thursday, December 08, 2005
By David Savona Chicago, one of America’s most cigar-friendly cities, passed a smoking ban yesterday that goes into effect January 16. Washington D.C. also voted on a ban, but the mayor has threatened a veto.
The ruling in Chicago, which comes after months of heated hearings, includes a last-minute compromise that opened loopholes in the ban that will allow some form of smoking to continue in the Windy City.
The law, approved 45-1 by the Chicago City Council, bans smoking in restaurants, convention facilities, sports arenas, government vehicles used for city business, and the lobbies, hallways and other common areas in apartment buildings and condominiums. Smoking will also be prohibited within 15 feet of the entrance of a prohibited enclosed area.
The law does allow for smoking in cigar stores, hotel and motel rooms, private clubs and lodges, and bars, taverns and restaurant bars. Smoking in bars and restaurant bars will be allowed until July 1, 2008.
Buried in the law is a provision that makes this ban somewhat more palatable for smokers than those passed in California, New York or and other places. If the owner of a place of employment can demonstrate that its air filtration is sufficiently powerful—the wording suggests the air quality must be made the same as the air outside the establishment—to the satisfaction of the city commissioner of public health and the commissioner of the environment, smoking can take place.
Joe Viola of Air Cleaning Specialists in Chicago, which has been installing air cleaning technology since 1969, said he had been flooded by calls from concerned customers wanting to comply with the standards. Viola said the government had yet to come up with a scientific standard that he could meet. “They haven’t come up with what they’re going to base it on,” he said. “They’re going to have to come up with some scientific number.”
Despite the loophole, cigar smokers aren’t pleased. “It’s basically total defeat,” said Billy O’Hara, owner of Jack Schwartz Importer, a top-quality Chicago cigar store. “Even though bars have two and a half years to comply, you’re still going to the chair. You have a couple of years to think about it. We can’t have a cigar dinner anymore, unless it’s outside, I guess.”
The American Cancer Society championed the ban and spent an estimated $4 million on a lobbying campaign, according to news sources. The loopholes and long phase-in for bars didn’t sit well with the organization. “There isn’t any celebrating going on,” Joel Africk, CEO of the Chicago Lung Association, said in a Chicago Sun-Times story. “It’s a little difficult to celebrate, knowing that some Chicago workers would have to wait a long time to enjoy smoke-free air.”
Chicago smokers have long gathered at the entrances of buildings with smoking bans to puff away, but the 15-foot rule will push them farther from the buildings’ entrances. It’s unclear what effect the city’s notoriously cold winters will have on those who choose to puff outdoors.
Smoking bans seem to be sweeping the nation. Washington state recently went smoke-free, prohibiting smoking even in cigar shops.
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