Restaurant smokers may be isolated

Publication Date: 2005-05-27

• Author:Mark Binker
• Publication:Greensboro (NC) News & Record

Smoking sections in restaurants would have to be cordoned off from nonsmoking areas under a proposed law that cleared a House judiciary committee Thursday.

The measure replaces an earlier proposal that would have banned smoking in all restaurants.

"The problem is restaurants don't choose to be nonsmoking or smoking, they choose to be both," Rep. Hugh Holliman, a Lexington Democrat, said Thursday in explaining the bill to the House Judiciary I Committee.

The bill next will be heard by the full House and, if it passes next week, be sent to the Senate.