North Carolina goes smoke-free. Why can’t we?

Publication Date: 2009-05-25

• Author:Editorial Board
• Publication:St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Time was when having a drink in a North Carolina bar meant having a cigarette, too--or at least inhaling a few coffin nails' worth of tobacco smoke. Times have changed.

The nation's largest tobacco-producing state just became the latest state with a clean indoor air law. Beginning Jan. 1, it will be illegal to smoke inside North Carolina bars and restaurants. North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue signed the law in Raleigh, next door to Durham, the historic headquarters of Big Tobacco...

St. Louis-area officials have been saying that for at least 15 years, yet smoking still is allowed in most restaurants and bars on this side of the Mississippi River.

Meanwhile, Missouri is in no immediate danger of joining North Carolina, Illinois or any of the other 25 states with clean indoor air laws. A proposed smoking ban introduced by state Sen. Joan Bray, D-University City, never got out of committee before the Legislature adjourned on May 15...

Workplace smoking may be good for tobacco companies’ bottom lines, but it is hazardous to the rest of us. Non-smokers on Tobacco Road in North Carolina soon will have more rights than non-smokers in Missouri. This is crazy.