Going Cold Turkey : O.C. Workplaces, Restaurants Gear Up for Smoking Ban

On New Year’s Day, one of the nation’s toughest anti-smoking laws takes effect in California, banning people from lighting up in most enclosed workplaces and virtually all restaurants.

While health groups and others have praised the new law as a key victory in the fight against the dangers of secondhand smoke, some business groups argue that the statute is vague and will give employers headaches. And it is not universally popular.

“I prefer offering a choice,” said Craig Gilbert, manager of Antonello Ristorante in Santa Ana, which has separate dining rooms for smokers and nonsmokers. “A lot of our clientele enjoys smoking,” he said. “Maybe now they’ll just have to go outside to smoke.”

The new law will have a greater effect in Orange County than in Los Angeles, which last year required its restaurants to be smoke-free. Suburban and rural areas generally have not been as aggressive in imposing smoking prohibitions in restaurants and other public places.

The law will apply in all cities except those that have stronger anti-smoking ordinances. Smoking will be allowed in bars, including those inside restaurants, but only until Jan. 1, 1997. And new federal or state clean-air regulations could move up that compliance date.

That uncertainty plus certain aspects of the new law trouble some businesses.

Bob Reeves, director of industrial safety and health at the California Chamber of Commerce, said the law requires employers to post “clear and prominent” no-smoking signs, “but it gives no requirements on signage.”

The California Department of Health, which lobbied to get the law enacted, said the state is working with local governments to educate employers about the new law, including details such as signage.

“There’s an enthusiasm in California for smoke-free work sites,” said Colleen Stevens, an analyst with the Health Department in Sacramento. She said California’s law is the strongest of its kind in the nation.

Besides bars, other places exempted from the ban are gaming clubs, truck cabs, most rooms and lobby areas of hotels, large warehouses in which 20 or fewer employees work, and businesses that employ five or fewer workers where all agree to allow smoking and where minors are not allowed.

The restaurant industry, however, has been at the center of the debate on smoking bans and will probably feel the broadest and most costly effects from the new law, signed by Gov. Pete Wilson in July.

Whether voluntarily or because of local ordinances, an increasing number of workplaces in the state have become smoke-free in recent years. But many restaurants, fearing a loss of business, have maintained smoking areas wherever they can.

The California Restaurant Assn. supported the smoke-free legislation largely because it felt that a uniform ordinance would put all restaurants in the same competitive situation. “Hopefully, the playing field will be leveled,” said Stan Kyker, the association’s executive vice president.

For example, when Sacramento enacted a workplace and restaurant smoking ban about two years ago, “we clearly lost business to two similar coffee shops just two blocks away outside the city limit,” said a senior executive at Family Restaurants Inc., the Irvine-based company that operates 200 Coco’s and Carrows in California.

“Now you don’t have to go two blocks away,” said the executive, who asked not to be identified. But the new law, he said, could cost the company business anyway if people who smoke decide not to eat out as much because they can’t light up in restaurants.

Kyker said that probably will not happen on a large scale because most people have become accustomed to smoking bans.

As of June, 72 cities in California had laws specifying that workplaces be 100% smoke-free, and 91 cities had such smoking bans specifically for restaurants, according to California Smoke-Free Cities, a nonprofit group in Sacramento.

Several cities in Orange County, including Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach and Laguna Hills, prohibit smoking in restaurants, but none has such an ordinance for the workplace. And the county’s largest cities, Anaheim and Santa Ana included, do not have 100% smoking bans for restaurants, according to the June report.

In Los Angeles County, Pasadena, Long Beach and Santa Monica are among those cities that ban smoking in restaurants or workplaces or both.

Enforcement of the statewide smoking ban is expected to be handled by local law agencies or health departments.

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Smoke-Free Workplaces

Beginning Sunday, state law prohibits smoking in most enclosed workplaces in California. An enclosed workplace can be broadly defined as any place of employment, including offices and restaurants, that has four walls and a ceiling. The following places are specifically excluded from AB 13 but may be regulated by local governments:

* Small businesses (five or fewer employees), when all four of the following conditions are met:

The smoking area is not accessible to minors.

No employees are required to work in smoking area against their will.

Air from smoking area is vented directly to outside of the building.

Employer complies with all applicable state and federal ventilation standards.

* Gaming clubs, bars and taverns are exempt until Jan. 1, 1997, unless state or federal agencies set smoke-limiting standards for such places sooner.

* Sixty-five percent of hotel and motel guest rooms.

* Designated portions of hotel and motel lobbies. In large lobbies, smoking area can cover up to 25% of entire space.

* Meeting and banquet rooms in hotels, motels, restaurants and convention centers, except when used for exhibit purposes or when meals are being served. During these times, smoking may be permitted in corridors or anterooms if no employee is stationed there.

* Warehouses with more than 100,000 square feet of floor space and 20 or fewer full-time employees. Does not apply to any office space within a warehouse, which must be kept smoke-free.

* Tobacco shops and attached private smokers’ lounges.

* Employee break rooms designated for smoking, under strict ventilation rules like those for small businesses, listed above.

* Truck cabs and tractors, when a nonsmoking employee is not present.

* Private residences, except when used as a licensed child-care facility.

* Other exceptions:

Theatrical production sites, if critical to the production.

Medical research or treatment sites, if necessary for research.

Patient smoking areas of long-term health-care facilities.

What Employers Need to Do

The state law, called AB 13, requires specific actions on the part of employers to ensure the safety of all employees.

* If building is entirely smoke-free, employer must clearly post “No Smoking” signs at each building entrance.

* If building has a designated smoking area, signs stating “Smoking Is Prohibited Except in Designated Areas” must be clearly posted at each building entrance.

* If non-employee is seen smoking in the enclosed work area, employer must ask that individual to refrain from doing so.

Source: California Department of Health Services; Researched by VICKY CLEPPER / Los Angeles Times