Smoke-Free Sunday
By kate on May 12th, 2005
I found this blurb in today’s Times:
Smoke-free day
Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub in the Pike Place Market neighborhood is going permanently smoke-free June 1. For the rest of this month, though, smoking at Kells is restricted to a back bar area, except for Sunday.
On Sunday, Kells will be among a number of local establishments participating in the state Department of Health’s first designated Smoke-Free Sunday. The health department is urging public establishments, such as restaurants, pubs and bowling alleys, to go smoke-free for at least that day. The department also is encouraging patrons to show support for the smoke-free movement by dining at smoke-free places.
The state health department’s tobacco prevention-and-control program has initiated a public campaign to make it easier for the public to identify eateries that are smoke-free. The department is providing establishments that ban smoking with a “100% Smoke-Free” decal for display on front doors or windows.
A health department Web site lists establishments, which include some bars and taverns, that are permanently smoke-free, and those observing Smoke-Free Sunday. A map - on http://www.SecondhandSmokesYou.com - lists more than 5,800 smoke-free eating places in this state.
At first, I was planning to write this entry to encourage everyone to go out on Sunday to the restaurants/bars that were temporarily going smoke-free. The smoke-free website has a long list of participating restaurants in Seattle alone.
However, the more I looked into it, I realized that only a tiny handful in that long list are not ALREADY smoke-free restaurants. The only one I could pick out (aside from Kell’s) was Maguire’s Irish Bistro. Ultimately, I’m forced to conclude that Smoke Free Sunday is a sham.
That doesn’t mean I don’t support going smoke-free. Here’s a list of permanently smoke-free restaurants in Seattle that you can patronize. (I wish they had a separate list for bars, which would be extra-useful.)
A funny irony is that on the Smoke-Free website, they have a really beautiful picture of rising smoke. Way to make smoking look bad, folks…
Filed under: current events
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May 12th, 2005 at 10:48 am
Penn & Teller do an episode of Bullshit! on the sham of second-hand smoke and the smoking ban in New York. Even though they are both non-smokers who hate cigarettes, they are opposed to the ban and set out to prove that national organizations are twisting facts to support their bogus claims that second-hand smoke leads to ill-health. I found it very interesting.
That said, I’m a BIG FAN of restaurants that don’t allow smoking, for whatever reason. I love living in New York where any place I go I only have to hold my breath when walking through the front door (because that’s where all the smokers hang out). Going out is way more fun when you don’t come home smelling like an ashtray.