If the air in New York seems a little less grimy this spring, thank Rudolph Giuliani. On January 10th, after months of burning debate, the city’s non-smoke mayor
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signed the Smoke-Free Air Act. From April 10th smoking will be stubbed out(碾灭) in restaurants catering for more than 35 people, a move that will hit about half the city’s 11,000 eating places. Nicotine addicts will also smoked out at work, except
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in ventilated smoking rooms or offices occupied by no more than three consenting adults. More radically, outdoor seating areas will also become smoke zones.
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Come the new baseball season, fans at Yankee Stadium will be breaking the law if they light up.
New York joins well over 100 American cities—and four states—that have passed laws banned smoking
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in public places. More than a third of American companies now forbid smoking in the workplace, up to
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a mere 20% in 1986. And the tobacco industry, which in America alone has annual sales of close to $50 billion, is watching its profits go down in smoke.
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The industry may never recover. Polls suggest that nine out of ten Americans are irritated by cigarette smoke. With good reason. In 1993 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified
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“second-hand” smoke as a health hazard—one that,according to the EPA, causes 3,000 non-smokers to die from lung cancer each year.
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New Yorkers must now wait and see if the pro-smoking lobby’s alarming predictions of citywide economical collapse come true. Tobacco
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company Philip Morris may show the way. Last year it threatened to move its 2,000 head-office employee out
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of the city if the smoking ban became law.