Free Republic

While some say the introduction of the statewide smoking ban next Saturday will level the playing field, a group of restaurants and bar owners are fuming over what they say are unfair exemptions.Smokers who travel to Colorado’s casinos and Denver International Airport will be able to light up.Puffing on a Basic Ultra Light last week over a game of bingo at Loveland Elks Lodge 1051, Frank Bustos said the law is unfair. “They shouldn’t hold the bar and pool hall owners back,” said Bustos, who has been a smoker for 53 of his 65 years. “Bars are traditionally a...

Twelve Madison businesses have surrendered their city liquor licenses, the same number as last year, according to the city clerk's office. Anti-smoking advocates say this is evidence Madison's smoking ban hasn't hurt business, but the head of the Dane County Tavern League says the numbers are meaningless. "It seems pretty typical," said Maribeth Witzel-Behl, license clerk. Friday was the deadline for liquor-license holders to tell the city whether they want to renew their licenses. Nine businesses notified the city they would surrender their licenses; three more failed to respond by the deadline and have disconnected telephone numbers. Liquor-license holders have...

With nearly half the state Senate signing on as sponsors, a bill being introduced today in the General Assembly seems to put the Peach State on the path to join California, Florida and others in enacting a statewide ban on smoking in restaurants and other public places. Anti-smoking bills have failed in Georgia since the first attempt in 1995. But with 25 of the Senate's 56 members as co-sponsors — and with many communities having enacted or contemplating smoking bans — state Sen. Don Thomas (R-Dalton) likes the odds. "The momentum is going in our direction," said Thomas, a family...

Smokers will face a new choice of bars in the new year ahead. While some bars will be entirely smoke-free, including many in the greater Augusta area, others have spent thousands of dollars to build covered annexes for their smoking clientele in preparation for Maine's ban on smoking in bars next year.Maine legislators (AND THE RINO'S INCLUDED) passed the ban on smoking in bars and taverns in June, joining New York, California and Delaware in extending smoke-free environments to one of the last bastions of public indoor smoking. The ban takes effect Jan. 1, and experience in other states...

Bans on smoking indoors have had an unintended consequence: more cigarette butts littering the outdoors. It is an issue some people are beginning to regard as a serious environmental problem. Across the nation, anti-litter activists are launching campaigns to get smokers to clean up after themselves. And anti-tobacco activists are using the concern to push for outdoor smoking bans, as happened last month in Solana Beach. The North County city became the first in the state to ban smoking at the beach when its new law took effect Thursday. The environmental message: Cigarette butts release contaminants into waterways, choke wildlife...