Vermont - Statewide Smoking Ban

Statewide smoking ban: Effective September 1, 2005, smoking is banned in all enclosed workplaces in Vermont, including all bars and restaurants, except in areas of owner-operated businesses with no employees that are not open to the public, as well as in any business in separately-ventilated designated smoking areas where employees are not required to be, although this latter exception is scheduled to end on July 1, 2009, under the terms of S.7, which Governor Jim Douglas signed into law in May 2009.

Vermont's smoking ban exempts designated unenclosed smoking areas in businesses where the layout of the workplace is such that smoking will not be a physical irritation to any nonsmoking employee and three-fourths of the employees in the workplace agree, although S.7 is scheduled to end this exemption, too.

With in effect, the Vermont Veterans Home in Bennington will be the only non-owner-operated workplace in the state permitted to allow smoking.

Vermont is one of only three states (along with Washington and Utah) with a statewide smoking ban that does not expressly exempt tobacconists, and is the only state that does not allow the designation of hotel/motel smoking rooms.

Local governments may regulate smoking more stringently than the state law.