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Help Your Peers: Providing Incentives to Encourage
Restaurants to Go Smoke-Free
3.24.2008
Q: Virginia is interested in any information on monetary incentives states have used to encourage restaurants to go smoke-free faster, including, but not limited to, tax incentives and waiving licensure fees.
Note: This question was posted following a request from Virginia legislators to obtain examples of other state efforts to encourage smoke-free air policy adoption. The Virginia Tobacco Control Program does not support the strategy of providing incentives to workplaces or other public place for going smoke-free.
- Alabama - Alabama has recognized smoke-free restaurants with certificates from their local coalitions. Coalition meetings are held in smoke-free restaurants. Several years ago, they published smoke-free dining guides and distributed them; now coalitions list restaurants on their Web sites..
- California - The California Tobacco Control Program produced a manual in May 2001, California Lessons in Clean Indoor Air -- A Compilation of Campaign Stories, Implementation Tools, and Compliance Strategies. States can access the pdf with this link.
- Indiana - Indiana discourages tax incentives for businesses to go smoke-free.
- West Virginia - West Virginia has NOT offered this type of restaurant incentives! They are unsure this would be a good use of prevention funding at any level.
Additional Resources:
The Fundamentals of Smoke-Free Workplace Laws is a consensus document published in 2006 that was designed to help guide and maximize the impact of efforts to increase the numbers of workers and residents in the United States who are protected from secondhand smoke in workplaces and public places. On page 12 of the document, licensing, fees, and tax incentives are noted as ineffective and should be avoided:
“Instead of imposing fees on restaurants or other hospitality businesses that allow smoking, [this approach] provides tax incentives to businesses that voluntarily go smokefree…this approach does not require any businesses to prohibit smoking, but merely creates a financial incentive for them to do so. Tax incentives reward businesses for doing something that they should be required to do in any case, namely protecting the health of their employees and customers…these provisions offer false reassurance, giving the impression that the problem of secondhand smoke has been solved without actually doing so. Again, to be effective smokefree laws should protect ALL employees and customers in ALL businesses.”
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