If Virginia falls*, can the Carolinas be far behind? The Outlaw, Michael Heath’s brilliant Spectator cartoon strip about the last remaining smoker, becomes ever more prescient. Not for the first time, one can only mutter O Tempora, O Mores…Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and House Speaker William J. Howell announced a deal Thursday morning to ban smoking in restaurants and bars in Virginia, a monumental decision in a state built on the profits of cigarette sales that remains the home to the nation’s largest tobacco company.
*The proposed Virginia bill is less draconian than most in as much as it exempts private clubs and permits bars to have a separate “enclosed, ventilated” smoking room. But still. Whatever happened to Big Tobacco?
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