State bill would ban smoking at tobacco shops

State Senator Mark DeSaulnier wants California to enact even tougher smoking laws. In 1994 California became the first state to ban smoking in most indoor places but DeSaulnier says 25 other states have since adopted stronger laws to protect people from second-hand smoke. He's proposing a bill which would expand the statewide smoking ban to include employee break rooms, private residences that house day care, warehouses and tobacco shops.

The Sanctuary Tobacco shop has been in San Luis Obispo since 1973. As the city has enacted groundbreaking legislation over the years to ban smoking in public places, The Sanctuary has always gotten an exemption and patrons have been able to smoke at the shop. The proposed state law may put the smoke out.

Smoking Screen

Cinema's power to move and mould men is awesome. Actors play facilitators and propagators of this power, and when India's Federal Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, carried out a long campaign some months ago to ban smoking on the screen and even succeeded in doing so, he certainly had a point. Film heroes and heroines who essayed smokers often set hard-to-resist examples for especially their younger fans. The act was what mattered, not its consequences. Neither the money spent on cigarettes nor the terribly ruinous effect they had on health appeared on the radar of all those who idolised the men and women puffing away on the screen.

No reason to carve exceptions in state smoking ban

When Washington voters were asked to approve one of the nation’s strictest smoking bans in 2005, protecting workers’ health was one of the most prominent arguments initiative supporters used.

Voters agreed that the people who worked in restaurants, taverns, bowling alleys, nontribal casinos and clubs shouldn’t have to breathe smoke for hours on end and risk a host of illnesses associated with secondhand smoke – which kills thousands of Americans every year. And so Washingtonians voted yes, and for five years workers’ health has been protected.

Now some legislators – including state Reps. Chris Hurst, D-Enumclaw; Steve Kirby, D-Tacoma; and Hans Zeiger, R-Puyallup – want to take that protection away for some workers.

Florida Department of Corrections facilities to be tobacco-free

Tallahassee – To reduce healthcare costs and to make our prisons safer, Florida Department of Corrections facilities will be tobacco-free in six months.

Smoking bans have long been in place in all of Florida's public buildings and offices, over half of the state prisons in the U.S. already have similar bans, and since 2004, all of the prisons in the Federal Prison system have banned smoking on prison grounds.

“Inmate smoking and second-hand smoking is costing millions in healthcare costs each year,” said Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Edwin Buss. “Eliminating smoking is a win for taxpayers, but it’s also a win for employees and inmates, making our facilities healthier places to work and live in, and making them a little safer too.”

China Film Administration Seeks to Stub Out Cinematic Smoking

The government is working to cut smoking scenes out of television and movies, which will lead to resistance from the country’s powerful tobacco industry.

BEIJING – Media authorities in China have again raised a stink about smoking depicted on screen, ordering producers to stub out cinematic cigarettes to help rein in the country’s rampant use of tobacco.

China produces -- and its people consume -- more tobacco products than any other country in the world. Chinese also see plenty of smoking in their average filmed entertainment. No surprise considering the business is a state-run cash cow that paid roughly $75 billion in taxes to the one-party Chinese government in 2010, State Tobacco Monopoly Administration data shows.