The Tobacco Industry has traditionally opposed smoking bans in public places, because such bans both encourage smokers to quit and reduce the number of cigarettes smokers consumed per day.

However, the Philip Morris website now states that the conclusions of public health officials concerning environmental tobacco smoke are “sufficient to warrant measures that regulate smoking in public places.”

One tactic the industry has taken is pushing ventilation systems as the answer. Ventilation may reduce the visible smoke in the air, but ventilation systems in restaurants are not solutions. To eliminate the risk would require removing 50,000 liters per second per occupant, which are tornado levels of moving air. (Risk Analysis, 1998) Installing a ventilation system is an option that may reduce some of your employees' and patrons' exposure to secondhand smoke, but aside from being extremely expensive, even the newest ventilation technologies under ideal conditions are incapable of removing all secondhand smoke and its toxic constituents from the air.

For more on ventilation, visit http://www.no-smoke.org/getthefacts.php?dp=d20