MN Senate Committee Modifies Smoking Ban in Bars

02/19/2007

Smoke 'em if you got 'em, Senate committee says, as bars with ventilation systems get break


BY RACHEL E. STASSEN-BERGER
Pioneer Press


Smokers, light your cigarettes.

A Senate committee today changed the statewide smoking ban to allow smoking in bars, if the bar has a ventilation system.

The ventilation requirement would be phased in, depending on how much alcohol the bar sells as a percentage of all sales. By June 2009, bars earning up to 40 percent of sales from alcohol must have a system in place. The grace period for installing a system then increases with the percentage of alcohol sold. Bars earning 80 percent or more of sales from alcohol have until 2014 to install a system.

The measure would also forbid local governments from enacting any smoking bans that go further than the state law.

That would mean that if the ban were enacted as the Senate Committee on Business, Industry and Jobs left it today, St. Paul, Minneapolis and other local governments would have to allow smoking in bars with ventilation systems.

Currently, St. Paul bans smoking in bars but the rest of Ramsey County allows smoking in establishments with more than 50 percent of their sales from alcohol.

The measure would ban smoking in restaurants.

It's unlikely the ban proposal will remain in the form it left the Senate committee today. At least three more committees will debate the proposal before it hits the Senate floor.

In the House, a complete smoking ban in bars and restaurants awaits a hearing in the Commerce and Labor committee.