Officials To Seek Smoking Ban

Publication Date: 2009-10-29

• Publication:KTUL

Oklahoma health officials say they will try again next year to pass legislation to ban smoking in bars and restaurants.

Representatives of the American Heart Association and the state Department of Health announced their plans Thursday. The legislation will be similar to a bill that died in the Oklahoma House last spring.

Marilyn Davidson of the American Heart Association says the bill would remove exemptions to anti-smoking legislation approved in 2003. The exemptions allow smoking in separate smoking rooms in restaurants and stand-alone bars.

Davidson says anti-smoking advocates are sympathetic to restaurants who spent thousands of dollars building smoking rooms to comply with the state law. But they say they're more concerned with the health of the people who work in those rooms.