It looks like the Virginia legislature is doing the smoking ban dance again. Gov. Tim Kaine (D) and House Speaker William Howell (R) announced last week that they had struck a deal on legislation that would turn the bill into law, but on Monday the senate rejected the particulars of that deal. After fighting over the substance of the bill between anti-smoking and tobacco lobbies, it isn’t much of a ban anyway. For starters, the fine for smokers and restaurants who defied the law is akin to getting a parking ticket, just $25.

Gov. Kaine revealed his desire for a smoking ban in restaurants in 2007, amending a watered down bill designed to affix what amounted to a Surgeon General’s Warning on restaurant windows with an all out ban on smoking in restaurants. Needless to say, like so many smoking ban bills introduced in the home of Richmond-based tobacco company Philip Morris, the bill joined the legislative scrap heap. 

This new brand of bill allows restaurants to create “separate ventilated rooms” for smokers without saying exactly what such a room should contain. Private clubs and outdoor patios were exempt from the ban, and smoking would be allowed in places that are technically off-limit to minors, or in any restaurant rented for a private function. 

Advocates of these bill have argued that it’s all about worker’s rights, about restaurant employees not having to breathe in secondhand smoke. Some bartenders Dish knows might find that kind of funny, the equivalent of a hospital employee objecting to secondhand germs and blood. But the anti-smoking crowd isn’t laughing.

According to the EPA, secondhand smoke is responsible for 3,000 lung cancer deaths a year. Of course, there’s the irony here that alcohol consumption is potentially more dangerous to public health than second hand smoke, yet no one appears ready to demand a ban on serving alcohol. Over 13,000 are killed by drunk drivers each year. Of course, 3,000 deaths is nothing to scoff at, but we imagine those folks didn’t die from secondhand smoke inhalation on their way home from the bar. 

Besides, according to restaurant industry officials, 70 percent of Virginia’s restaurants have already banned smoking. So why pass a law that has no teeth, can’t be adequately enforced, and could become obsolete as more restaurants go smokeless?

As restauranteur/chef Christian Trendel said during the last go-around, “I’m not a smoker, and my restaurant is smoke-free, so this does not affect me personally. But I feel that business owners and their customers can make their own decisions without the government’s intervention.”

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