Virginia - Banning Smoking Statewide

Commonwealthwide partial smoking ban. On December 1, 2009, an amendment to Virginia's 1990 Indoor Clean Air Act is scheduled to take effect banning smoking statewide in enclosed public elevators, public school buses, primary and secondary schools, hospital emergency rooms, health department offices, polling places, indoor service lines and cashier lines, public restrooms in government buildings and hospitals, child daycare centers except where located in a private home, and public restrooms of health care facilities, and relegating smoking in restaurants (including bars) to separately-ventilated designated smoking rooms that are structurally separated from the rest of the establishment.

The Act exempts private clubs, retail tobacco stores, tobacco warehouses, tobacco manufacturing facilities, prisons, designated smoking areas in government offices, food preparation facilities for catering services, restaurants located on the premises of tobacco manufacturers, rented private rooms in restaurants; requires the reasonable designation of non-smoking areas in educational facilities where smoking is not banned, hospitals, retail stores bigger than 15,000 square feet, and recreational facilities. Local governments are preempted from regulating smoking more stringently than the Acts.

Since 2006, smoking in state offices, vehicles, and buildings (except for correctional facilities) has been banned by executive order issued by the Governor of Virginia.

Norfolk, March 25, 2008, repealed a ban on smoking in restaurants, which was passed in October 2007 but had not yet gone into effect, by City Council vote of 5-2, because the City Attorney advised the Council that its ban would violate Virginia state law and could not withstand a legal challenge.