The bluish haze that has hung over the Third Street Diner’s bar and booths for decades will finally lift next month as a new anti-smoking law takes hold in Virginia, a huge shift for a state whose tobacco habit dates to the Jamestown settlement.
On Tuesday Virginia will join dozens of other US states that ban smoking in restaurants. Restaurants will be allowed to have a smoking area only if they segregate smokers into rooms with ventilation systems separate from those for nonsmoking patrons.
Strict new curbs on lighting up where food and drink are sold were enacted by lawmakers in Richmond and in Raleigh, North Carolina, major tobacco capitals where cigarette giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds have been accustomed to getting their way.
North Carolina’s law takes effect on Jan. 2 and will allow smoking on outdoor patios and in private membership clubs, as does Virginia’s law. Unlike Virginia, North Carolina law will not allow any smoking in restaurants.
Virginia restaurant industry lobbyist Tom Lisk expects only about 10 percent of the state’s restaurants to retain smoking areas.
Some, like Williamsburg blues and jazz nightspot owner Randall Plaxa, decided to go smoke-free well ahead of the deadline.
To Maher Elmasri, the change is an unfair threat to his hookah restaurant in Vienna. The Palestinian immigrant is spending thousands of dollars on architects, engineers, builders and ventilation contractors to keep the hookah in use at his Middle Eastern restaurant, Lebnan Zaman.
Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have laws that ban restaurant smoking, the American Lung Association says.
Some of them exempt hookah lounges, but by the time Elmasri learned that Democratic Governor Timothy Kaine and legislative Republican leaders were rushing their compromise bill toward passage, it was too late.
“It’s like the government going into the Cheesecake Factory and saying, “You can’t serve cheesecake any more,’” Elmasri said.
For restaurants, Lisk argued that allowing separate smoking rooms put small, family-owned places at a disadvantage.
Now, as the effective date of Virginia’s law approaches, most restaurateurs are relieved it’s here, Lisk said.
“I am counting on that so much,” said Plaxa, who made J.M. Randalls smoke-free on Father’s Day.
He lost the hard-drinking, hard-partying crowd and saw sales fall nearly US$250,000 as liquor and beer orders dropped by nearly half, but food orders are up 44 percent and wine sales have increased eightfold, Plaxa said.
While he hasn’t fully recouped the money the late-night party animals spent, costs have gone down. Smoke took a toll on his equipment and maintenance budget, he said. He also sees growth in a different class of customer that may be even more profitable.
“The more responsible person is a person who doesn’t smoke. These people take care of themselves. They’re in bed by 10 or 10:30 at night and they’re up before sunrise next morning to work out,” he said.
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