Smoking banned in Utah bars

Salt Lake City, United States, January 2: In a bid to protect bar employees and customers from secondhand smoke, lawmakers have made smoking illegal in Utah’s bars starting this New Year. Secondhand smoke is a major cause of cancerdefine in human beings.

All the bars have been directed to go smoke-free from 31st December midnight. Such types of bans have already been implemented in New York, California and many other states and countries.

A law prohibiting smoking in private clubs and pubs has been in effect since 2006. But it was applicable to only newly licensed clubs.

The new law states that if anyone is found smoking in a bar, he would be fined $100 for the first time. If the offence is repeated the second time, this offender will have to pay up $500. Moreover, the bars can be fined up to $5000 for allowing people to smoke in their premises.

But spokesman of the Utah Department of Health’s Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, David Neville, made it clear that police would not be on the lookout for those who break the law and smoke.

Neville said, “Cops aren't going to be out looking for people. It's not like a parking ticket where if you're on the wrong side of the street, you'll get a ticket.” He added, “People generally like to keep the law.... Utahans can be trusted not to smoke.”

But the bar owners are not happy with the new law as they believe that their business will be affected. Owner of the bar Cheers To You, Bob Brown, said that he might end up losing 30 percent of his business after the implementation of the smoking ban.

Brown further said, “The reality is, I'm not a smoker. I hate cigarette smoke. I don't go into my own private club because it's smoky. This is not a health issue at all for me. This is a business issue.”

Presently Brown is trying to get a judgement from the health department which states that cigarettes do not come under tobacco products. The reason that Brown’s attorney is going to give is the state code does not include cigarettes under the definition of a tobacco product. Therefore, the Indoor Clean Air Act does not extend to cigarettes.

Attorney Trent Waddoups wrote, “The Utah Legislature has distinguished between tobacco products and cigarettes for many years. It deliberately declined to ban the smoking of cigarettes in private clubs.”

However, David Sundwall, executive director of the health department stated otherwise and wrote in his declaratory order, “The express declaration in the Utah Indoor Clean Air Act to regulate tobacco products in any form controls and includes cigarettes.”