DURHAM, N.C. — In dozens of states, Gary Richards wouldn’t have been able to light up a Marlboro before tucking into his meat-lover’s pizza, as he did at Satisfaction Restaurant & Bar this week. But in North Carolina, the nation’s leading tobacco producer, limits on indoor smoking have lagged behind those in much of the country.
That changes today, when smoking in restaurants and bars is banned in the state that is home to two major tobacco companies and where the golden leaf helped build Duke and Wake Forest universities.
“There’s smokers, and there’s nonsmokers. We’ve gotten along in the past,” Richards, 52, said during a pre-meal smoke at the restaurant inside a former tobacco warehouse. “Why can’t I come in here and have my beer and a couple of slices of pizza and a cigarette?”
The dangers of secondhand smoke and complaints from patrons about the smell finally won out when the legislature approved the ban in 2009 after years of failures.
“This law doesn’t tell anybody they shouldn’t smoke,” said state Rep. Hugh Holliman, a lung-cancer survivor whose sister died of lung cancer. He led the charge for the legislation. “It’s saying nonsmokers should have the same right to breathe clean air.”
North Carolina is at least the 29th state to ban smoking in restaurants and the 24th for bars, according to the American Lung Association.
The new prohibitions represent a dramatic turn for a state that produces nearly half of the nation’s tobacco. The headquarters for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Inc. remain in North Carolina, where colonists began growing tobacco in the 1600s.
But the golden leaf’s role has changed dramatically as the state’s economy shifted from agricultural to manufacturing, services and technology.
Other traditional tobacco-growing states have few, if any, restrictions on smoking in public places and work sites.
Virginia passed a statewide ban that took effect Dec. 1, but restaurants and bars can get around it if they have separate ventilation systems for smoking and nonsmoking sections.
Restaurant owners are generally pleased with the ban, particularly because it includes bars, according to Paul Stone with the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association. Many bars would have been exempt under previous legislation that failed.
“It’s a level playing field across the state,” said Mike Kelly, a nonsmoker who owns Kelly’s Restaurant in the beach town of Nags Head. “I don’t think it will affect our business hardly at all.”
