Free Republic

PRINCETON BOROUGH - An outdoor public plaza used to be the kind of place where smokers like Joseph Santoli were practically guaranteed a safe haven to light up. So Santoli, who was looking for a local cigar shop while visiting Princeton this week from Ridgewood, was surprised to learn that borough officials want to prohibit smoking in a new 15,000-square-foot outdoor plaza downtown next to the Princeton Public Library. Last night, the borough council voted 5-1 to adopt an ordinance that includes a ban on smoking in the plaza. Under the ban, which applies only to the library plaza, violators...

SPRINGFIELD -- Health groups won a key battle in the state Senate Monday as lawmakers voted to allow all Illinois towns, rather than a select few, to decide where to allow smoking. Since 1989, when the state approved the Clean Indoor Air Act that permitted smoking only in designated areas, 20 municipalities were allowed to keep their stricter no-smoking laws that were enacted previously. The rest of the state functioned under the milder state law written partly by the tobacco industry. Though opposed by retailers, restaurants and gas station operators, the measure backed on Monday in the Senate vote would...

State Rep. Barb Vander Veen, R-Allendale, said she recently attended a conference in California with her husband and immediately noticed the lack of smoke -- cigarette smoke that is. "It was so nice," she said this morning. "I realized it was time for Michigan to be a leader and join California and other states that are smoke-free states." Vander Veen is among a group of state lawmakers hoping to add Michigan to a growing list of states that prohibit smoking in places where people eat, drink and work. Vander Veen and State Sen. Ray Basham, D-Taylor, have sponsored bills to...