Many Smokers Will Have a Hard Time Lighting Up on New Year's Day - East Idaho News
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Many Smokers Will Have a Hard Time Lighting Up on New Year’s Day

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Getty 030612 NoSmoking?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1356696627459iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — The new year is bringing in a new set of restrictions for smokers.

Starting on Jan. 1, a number of towns and workplaces across the country are enacting new rules that will make it harder for people to find a spot to light up.

The Wall Street Journal reports that beginning on Tuesday, workers at 3M’s headquarters in Saint Paul, Minn., may have to drive a quarter of a mile to a strip mall parking lot to have a cigarette because smoking will be banned everywhere on the corporate campus.

The newspaper says that state workers in Delaware also will have to go hunting for a place to smoke on New Year’s Day, as all state property — indoor and outdoor — becomes smoke-free.  The new rule in Delaware applies not only to tobacco products, but also to electronic cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and hookahs, according to the Journal.

Similar efforts are being discussed by officials from Maine to California as governments and businesses aim to protect non-smokers from secondhand smoke, the Journal says.  

The new rules come as fewer people are lighting up.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the number of U.S. adults who smoke dropped to 19 percent in 2011.

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