Kaine to sign restaurant-bar smoking ban legislation today

Publication Date: 2009-03-09

• Publication:Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine travels to Virginia Beach today to sign into law the restaurant and bar smoking ban legislation passed by the General Assembly earlier this year.

The compromise measure restricts smoking in restaurants to ones with rooms that are ventilated separately and to private clubs.

Twenty-three other states and Puerto Rico have passed bans on smoking indoors at bars and restaurants. But the governor says Virginia's new law is the toughest in the nation's top five tobacco-producing states.