Smoking Ban

A public policy, sometimes called a smoke-free law, that restricts or prohibits tobacco smoking in specified spaces through criminal law or occupational safety regulation. Smoking bans most commonly cover indoor workplaces and buildings open to the public, such as restaurants, bars, office buildings, schools, retail stores, hospitals, libraries, transport facilities and government buildings, and many extend to outdoor spaces such as parks, beaches, pedestrian plazas and areas near building entrances. A specialized variant, the generational smoking ban, prohibits the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after a specified year rather than restricting where smoking can occur. The primary justification given for smoking bans is protecting nonsmokers from secondhand smoke, which research links to heart disease, cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and the number of such bans worldwide increased substantially through the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as this evidence accumulated; the World Health Organization is among the international bodies supporting the policy, while opponents argue that such bans infringe on individual and property rights and impose economic costs on affected businesses.