PARKERSBURG - Mid-Ohio Valley Board of Health passed a definition change in the anti-smoking regulations Tuesday night.
The Clean Indoor Air Regulation needed fine tuning in language, said Dick Wittberg, executive director of the Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department.
"The current definition of 'enclosed space' has caused the health department some problems in regulating indoor smoking," Wittberg said. "So, we are going to take the Ohio definition of an enclosed space."
The state of Ohio defines an enclosed space as two walls with a roof, which gives establishments less leeway on indoor smoking.
"The intent of the (original) regulation was to end smoking in public buildings, but because our regulations only list that it has to be 15 feet from a door and have outside air, we are seeing smoking where there shouldn't be," Wittberg said.
Wittberg said the intent of the new wording is to end all indoor smoking.
"This will make it so there will be no smoking allowed indoors," Wittberg said. "It will make life a lot easier for my sanitarians and will be easier to enforce than the previous regulations."
The department's regulation, which covers six counties, including Wood, went into effect in 2005. The initial phase gave restaurants, bars and video lottery establishments three years to become smoke free.
The final component, effective Oct. 1, 2008, banned smoking in all bars, restaurants and video lotteries.
The only exemptions to the smoke ban are nonprofit bingo halls, designated hotel rooms, meeting facilities in hotels or fraternal organizations that allow smoking and retail tobacco stores.
Children are not allowed in the meeting facilities in hotels and fraternal organizations where smoking is permitted.
Tony Richards, chairman of the board of health, said the change will give business owners a more clear definition of a smoking room.
"Back at our September board meeting, we had a community member ask us to define the term 'enclosed space.' We formed a work group to look at that definition and decided we needed to clarify and redefine the term," said Richards.
Many businesses in the Mid-Ohio Valley will be impacted by the definition change, and most of the smoking rooms may have to be closed, he said.
The new change will go into effect in October 2010, he said.
