Starting Saturday - stragglers get a one-day reprieve to puff away after their New Year’s Day meals - smokers will no longer be allowed to light up in North Carolina bars and restaurants. There are exceptions for country clubs, Elks lodges, and the like, but the change is a dramatic one for North Carolina, whose tax coffers long depended on Big Tobacco.
Virginia approved a similar law that took effect Dec. 1, but it is more accommodating to smokers because it allows establishments to offer areas in which to light up as long as they have separate ventilating systems.
Not including Virginia and its partial ban, smoking will be banned in restaurants in 29 states and in bars in 25, according to the American Lung Association.
And 12 more states - including Florida, Michigan, and Arkansas - have passed laws requiring companies to make their cigarettes less likely to start fires, leaving Wyoming as the only state without such laws, according to the Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes.
America’s roads should be safer in 2010, as bans on texting while driving go into effect in New Hampshire, Oregon, and Illinois.
According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, that will make 19 states that have outlawed the practice, not including six states that prohibit using hand-held cellphones while behind the wheel.
Also in New Hampshire, a new gay marriage law will replace a law that allows civil unions, which already provided gay couples with all the rights and responsibilities of marriage.
Starting tomorrow, a gay couple in a civil union can get a marriage license and have a new ceremony, if they choose. They also can convert their civil union into marriage without going through another ceremony.
Couples who do nothing will have their civil unions automatically converted to marriages in 2011. Conservatives are seeking to repeal the law.
A new Arkansas law prohibits retailers from selling toy guns that look like they real thing. But it may not have that big of an effect.
Imitation guns used for theater productions and other events are exempted, as are replicas of firearms produced before 1898, BB guns, and paintball or pellet guns.
Major retailers in the state also say they don’t expect any major changes from the new ban. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., based in Bentonville, Ark., says it already follows similar federal restrictions prohibiting the sale of realistic-looking toy guns.
And California will be the first state to partially ban the use of artificial trans fats in restaurants in 2010, following several major cities and fast-food chains that have erased the notorious artery-clogger from menus.
