If you've missed any of Marvin's past columns, access them in the Weekly Wrapper Archive. Post your view to the Dear Marvin Forum. Now Put Out that Smelly Stogie It became official one tick after midnight on New Year's Eve. You can't smoke in bars, not even cigar bars, in California. While some bar owners are searching for ways around the law, others are deliberately defying it in an effort to become test cases.
People are shocked.
They've known it was coming, but no one could really believe it was going to happen to them. The law is the final phase of California's indoor workplace smoking ban enacted on January 1, 1995. But Cal-OSHA never adopted standards, and time ran out on California smokers last Wednesday at midnight. Many predict that bar owners, fearful of a fatal drop in business if they forbid their customers from smoking, will ignore the ban. Bar owners, not smokers, are subject to fines levied by California's Health Department.