North Carolina, a top tobacco producer, bans smoking in restaurants

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 and 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 Saturday, 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 this week during a smoke before dinner 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 to employee health and complaints from patrons about the smell finally won out in 2009 when the legislature approved the ban 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 a relative latecomer to tobacco prohibitions. North Carolina is at least the 29th state to ban smoking in restaurants and 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 and Lorillard remain in North Carolina, where colonists began growing tobacco in the 1600s. The leaf became the top cash crop by far for eastern North Carolina farmers.

But the golden leaf's role has changed dramatically as the state shifted from an agricultural economy to one led by manufacturing, and most recently by services and technology.

In 1978, tobacco accounted for $1.1 billion, or 34 percent, of all farm income in North Carolina. Thirty years later tobacco production fell to $687 million, or 7 percent of farm income, according to federal agricultural data. The amount of tobacco grown also fell during the period to 390 million pounds from about 850 million pounds.

Still, about 21 percent of the state's adult population smoked in 2008, compared with 18 percent nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Other traditional tobacco-growing states have few, if any, statewide 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.