Report Title:

Smoking; Smoke-Free State Capitol

Description:

Prohibits smoking in the state capitol building. Establishes designated smoking areas. (SD1)

THE SENATE

S.B. NO.

993

TWENTY-SECOND LEGISLATURE, 2003

S.D. 1

STATE OF HAWAII

 


 

A BILL FOR AN ACT

 

relating to smoking.

 

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. The legislature finds that smoking-related diseases claim an estimated 430,700 American lives each year, including those affected indirectly, such as babies born prematurely due to prenatal maternal smoking and some of the victims of "secondhand" exposure to tobacco's carcinogens. Smoking costs the United States approximately $97,200,000,000 each year in health care costs and lost productivity. It is directly responsible for eighty-seven per cent of lung cancer cases and causes most cases of emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

Smoking is also a major factor in coronary heart disease and stroke. It may be causally related to malignancies in other parts of the body and has been linked to a variety of other conditions and disorders, including slowed healing of wounds, infertility, and peptic ulcer disease.

Smoking during pregnancy accounts for an estimated twenty to thirty per cent of low-birth weight babies, up to fourteen per cent of pre-term deliveries, and some ten per cent of all infant deaths. Even apparently healthy, full-term babies of smokers have been found to be born with narrowed airways and curtailed lung function. In 1999, 12.9 per cent of women who gave birth smoked during pregnancy.

Smoking by parents is also associated with a wide range of adverse effects in their children, including exacerbation of asthma, increased frequency of colds and ear infections, and sudden infant death syndrome. An estimated one hundred fifty thousand to three hundred thousand cases of lower respiratory tract infections in children younger than eighteen months, resulting in seven thousand five hundred to fifteen thousand annual hospitalizations, are caused by secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers from other people's cigarettes is classified by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as a known human (Group A) carcinogen, responsible for approximately three thousand lung cancer deaths annually in American nonsmokers.

Approximately 22.3 million American women are smokers. Current female smokers aged thirty-five years or older are twelve times more likely to die prematurely from lung cancer than nonsmoking females. More American women die annually from lung cancer than any other type of cancer. For example, lung cancer has caused an estimated 67,600 female deaths in 2000, compared with forty thousand eight hundred estimated female deaths caused by breast cancer.

Tobacco advertising plays an important role in encouraging young people to begin a lifelong addiction to smoking before they are old enough to fully understand its long-term health risk. It is estimated that 4.5 million American teenagers are cigarette smokers and 22.4 per cent of high school seniors smoke on a daily basis. Approximately ninety per cent of smokers begin smoking before the age of twenty-one.

The legislature further finds that workplaces nationwide are going smoke-free to provide clean indoor air and protect employees from the life-threatening effects of secondhand smoke. According to a 1992 Gallup poll, ninety-four per cent of Americans now believe companies should either ban smoking totally in the workplace or restrict it to designated areas. Employers have a legal right to restrict smoking in the workplace or implement a totally smoke-free workplace policy.

The purpose of this Act is to send a strong message to the youth of our State that tobacco kills, by setting an example of a smoke-free state capitol.

SECTION 2. Section 328K-2, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended to read as follows:

"§328K-2 Prohibition in certain places open to the public. Except as otherwise provided in this part, smoking shall be prohibited in the following places within the State:

(1) Elevators in buildings open to and used by the public, including elevators in apartment and other multi-unit residential buildings;

(2) Semiprivate rooms, wards, waiting rooms, lobbies, and public hallways of public and private health care facilities, including, but not limited to, hospitals, clinics, and physicians' and dentists' offices. Smoking shall be permitted in a private room or in a semiprivate room when there is no objection by any patient occupying such room;

(3) Restaurants.

(A) All restaurants shall provide nonsmoking areas [which] that are reasonably proportionate to the preference of the users and so located as to obtain the maximum effect of existing physical barriers and ventilation systems[,] and seating arrangements, to minimize the toxic effect of smoke in adjacent nonsmoking areas; provided no fixed structural or other physical modifications of the restaurant shall be required; and

(B) Nothing in this paragraph shall prevent a proprietor or person in charge of a facility from designating the entire restaurant as a nonsmoking area. Owners or proprietors of restaurants may expand or contract the size of designated nonsmoking areas to meet the requirements of their patrons;

(4) Any room [which] that is used primarily for exhibiting any motion picture, stage drama, dance, musical performance, or other similar performance during the time that the room is open to the public for [such] the performance;

(5) Museums, libraries, and galleries;

(6) The following facilities or areas in state or county owned or controlled buildings:

(A) The state capitol building and adjacent grounds in their entirety including:

(i) The basement and basement parking spaces;

(ii) All rooms; and

(iii) All hallways and lanais regardless of whether they are enclosed or not;

provided that an open area fifteen feet from the center railing on the makai side of the fifth floor and an open area ten feet makai of the Ewa-makai elevator on the first floor of the capitol building shall be designated smoking areas; provided further that an alternate first floor open area may be designated by the department of accounting and general services if the alternate open area has less pedestrian traffic than the area designated in this subparagraph;

[(A)] (B) Meeting or conference rooms;

[(B)] (C) Auditorium or sports areas that are enclosed;

[(C)] (D) Community centers where persons may gather for meetings, parties, or any other purpose where the area is enclosed;

[(D)] (E) Waiting areas, baggage claim areas, and check-in counters within buildings in all state airports; and

[(E)] (F) All areas open to the public, including service counters and reception or waiting areas;

(7) Except as otherwise provided in this section, all areas open to the public in the following business establishments:

(A) Banks;

(B) Credit unions;

(C) Financial services loan companies;

(D) Retail stores; and

(E) Savings and loan associations;

(8) Any restroom open to the public;

(9) Taxicabs, when carrying nonsmoking passengers;

(10) Cruise ships. The dining area of all cruise ships shall include a nonsmoking area [which] that is reasonably proportionate to the preference of the users and so located as to obtain the maximum effect of existing physical barriers and ventilation systems[,] and seating arrangements, to minimize the toxic effect of smoke; provided no fixed structural or other physical modifications of the cruise ship shall be required. This paragraph shall not apply to any cruise ship that does not serve any food or meals during its course of operation, or where the service of food is only incidental to the consumption of alcoholic beverages; and

(11) Notwithstanding the exceptions stated in section 328K-3, any area open to the public [which] that has been designated by the person having control of the area as a nonsmoking area and marked with a "no smoking" sign."

SECTION 3. Section 328K-13, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by amending subsection (a) to read as follows:

"(a) [Each] Except for the State as employer in the case of the state capitol building pursuant to section 328K-2(6)(A), each employer in the State [shall], within three months after June 24, 1987, shall adopt, implement, and maintain a written smoking policy [which] that shall contain, at the minimum, the following provisions and requirements:

(1) That if any nonsmoking employee objects to the employer about smoke in the employee's workplace, the employer, using already available means of ventilation or separation or partition of office space, shall attempt to reach a reasonable accommodation, insofar as possible, between the preferences of nonsmoking and smoking employees; provided that an employer is not required by this chapter to make any expenditures or structural changes to accommodate the preferences of nonsmoking or smoking employees; and

(2) That if an accommodation [which] that is satisfactory to all affected employees cannot be reached in any given office workplace, the preferences of a simple majority of employees in each specifically affected area shall prevail and the employer shall accordingly prohibit or allow smoking in that particular area of the office workplace. If the employer's decision is unsatisfactory to the nonsmoking employees, a simple majority of all nonsmoking employees can appeal to the director of health for the determination of a reasonable accommodation. Where the employer prohibits smoking in an office workplace, the area in which smoking is prohibited shall be clearly marked with signs."

SECTION 4. Statutory material to be repealed is bracketed and stricken. New statutory material is underscored.

SECTION 5. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.