virginia recently passed a partial ban on smoking. (a big shock for us, as virginia loves her tobacco industry). the new ban isn't complete, but requires that private establishments have separate ventilation systems for smoking and non-smoking sections. since this in most cases would involve quite an infrastructure overall, it will effectively remove smoking sections from most restaurants.
this is a great success for the public health community, restaurant workers, non-smoking consumers, and the health of virginians in general.
you can read about the bill and its history here. (at least this year's history... the effort has been going for many, many years). as a general plug, richmondsunlight is a great resource for tracking the progress of bills in the general assembly. its informed, interactive, and user-friendly. hooray!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
An alternative to smoking bans
It is clear that separation of smokers from non-smokers combined
with air exchange technology is a complete solution to this largely
artificial problem. All it takes is regulating authorities setting the
standards for indoor air quality on passive smoke, and the technology
does the rest. Such air quality standards are common in industrial
and environmental contexts. But, to date, no country in the world has
set them for smoking areas. It seems clear that the reasons are not
scientific, nor are they economic or technical: they are political.
As to the annoyance of smoking, a compromise between smokers and non-smokers
can be reached, through setting a quality standard and the use of modern
ventilation technology.
Air ventilation can easily create a comfortable environment that removes not
just passive smoke, but also and especially the potentially serious
contaminants that are independent from smoking.
Thomas Laprade
Post a Comment