Smoking ban also does away with ashtrays
Posted on Wednesday, May 17, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/154915/
When the statewide workplace smoking ban takes effect in July, smoking won’t be the only thing Arkansas will stamp out.
Ashtrays, tainted by their cigarette association, will also be banished.
The new law, Act 8 of 2006, calls for the removal of all ashtrays from areas where smoking is prohibited — virtually all workplaces. That opens new questions about ashtrays’ future as contraband.
Will pottery mishaps — once salvaged as ashtrays — become spoon holders and soap dishes instead ? Will souvenir ashtray collections be banned from office desks across the state ? Will stores that sell ashtrays be charged with possession ?
Rick Hogan, lead attorney for the Health Division of the state Department of Health and Human Services, says no.
Although the law and a draft of the accompanying regulations authorize fines of up to $ 500 for a misdemeanor conviction and civil penalties of up to $ 1, 000 a day when an ashtray is discovered on the premises, Hogan said the legislation wasn’t intended to rid the state of ashtrays.
He said ashtrays became a target because they typically signify where smoking is permitted.
“I don’t think they intended this law to attack ashtrays,” Hogan said. “I think it’s more about clean indoor air.”
State Rep. Jay Bradford, DWhite Hall, a co-sponsor of the smoking ban legislation, said the law’s impact on ashtrays didn’t occur to him when the Legislature passed the bill, but he and other legislators understood there would be some tweaking needed when the Health Division developed rules to guide the law’s implementation.
“The Health Department is promulgating rules that will make allowances for those type of art objects, so to speak,” he said. Another exception to the smoking ban that will need to be considered is smoking on stage for theater productions, Bradford said.
The law does not prohibit the possession of other tobacco paraphernalia such as pipes, rolling papers and lighters, or smokeless tobacco products or spittoons.
Hogan noted that at least three other states — Oklahoma, Georgia and Oregon — also prohibit ashtrays in public smokefree environments. Indeed, he noted that Columbus, Ohio, assessed its first fine under that city’s smoking ban for an ashtray violation.
Spanky’s Pub, according to a news account, received a $ 75 fine after a health inspector spotted an empty ashtray. The manager, Carolyn Turner, sold $ 1 Jell-O shots to pay the penalty. “Would it happen in Arkansas ?” Hogan commented about the violation and fine. “It wouldn’t be consistent with my advice, but it’s in the law.” What will become of contraband ashtrays also is an open question. John Bridges, general manager of the Oyster Bar in Little Rock, said he didn’t know what he would do with the 50 to 60 ashtrays his restaurant owns. Typically the restaurant gives silverware and dishes to homeless shelters when it replaces them, but that probably wouldn’t work with the ashtrays, some of which he just bought. He pondered the idea Tuesday of melting them down and making them into something else. “They’re not recyclable or anything, so I don’t know. Fill up a landfill someplace,” he said. “I guess we’ll just throw them in the back with a box, open them up 20 years from now.” But it isn’t clear that that would be legal, either.
The law, Arkansas Code Annotated 20-27-1806 (b ) states that the person in charge of “any area where smoking is prohibited” must “remove all ashtrays from the area, unless an ashtray is permanently affixed to an existing structure before the effective date of this act.” The law allows smoking areas in certain types of businesses, including hotels and motels, retail tobacco stores and longterm care facilities, as well as restaurants and bars that only allow people 21 and older.
Sarah Smith, owner of Firefly Studio in Little Rock, said she didn’t think her business would be required to remove the ashtrays she sells because they aren’t exactly ashtrays — yet. Firefly is a paint-your-own-pottery business, and Smith sells unfinished ashtrays that people pay to decorate.
“I don’t think I fall under that — having to remove all the ashtrays — because... ours aren’t useable until they’re painted and glazed and fired,” she said.
She recently ordered the ashtrays because so many customers requested them. Depending on demand, Smith will keep them in stock.
“With Father’s Day coming up I’m betting we’re going to sell a lot of them,” she said.
The finer points of what qualifies as an ashtray and what must go were something the legislators who sponsored the bill didn’t consider.
Asked whether ashtray collectors could keep their collection on their office desk, State Sen. Paul Miller, D-Melbourne, laughed.
“That’s a good question,” he said. “Surely people don’t keep them on their desk for collection. Do they do that ?”
He said gift shops could keep ashtrays in their inventory, because the law doesn’t ban selling ashtrays. Unlike an ashtray at a bar, Miller said, ashtrays sold in gift shops wouldn’t be out for smokers to use there.
“We’ve left some things to the Health Department to use good judgment, and I’m sure they will,” he said.
However, it’s likely that businesses that fall under the smoking ban will have to toss ashtrays with more mundane pedigrees.
Either way, new sanctions against ashtrays may work out fine for some souvenir and gift shops.
Selling ashtrays doesn’t seem to be the business it once was. Five state park lodges, two Cracker Barrel restaurants and one large Little Rock gift shop said they don’t sell ashtrays.
Hooters in North Little Rock was the only business contacted Tuesday that still sells them. If the restaurant has to stop selling ashtrays, Ben Hornbrook, one of the restaurant’s managers, said it will just stop ordering them.
Ashtrays are “not necessarily one of our bigger selling items,” he said.