HB 2 Passes Senate Without Amendments!

Here's an update from the NC Alliance for Health.

HB 2, Prohibit Smoking in Public and Workplaces, passed third and final reading by the NC State Senate by a vote of 30 to 18. As you may recall from action last week in the Senate Health Care Committee, the bill was scaled back from a comprehensive worksites bill (that would cover all worksites) to a restaurants and bars only bill with some restoration of local control.

Despite the scaled back version of the bill, most see this as an HISTORIC vote for North Carolina and a step toward protecting public health. In its current form, the bill will make all restaurants and bars in North Carolina smoke-free – a huge victory in a tobacco state like North Carolina.

One amendment was offered and defeated during third reading debate:

· Sen. Phil Berger (R- ) offered an amendment that would have vastly broadened the definition of “private club” to include any organization that holds “a permit to sell alcoholic beverages and may or may not serve food for pay to anyone who is a member or member’s guest.” This amendment would have eliminated the restriction that “private clubs” exempted from the bill include only those that were private, non-profit 501c3 organizations (such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars or Elks Lodges), opening the exemption as a possibly larger loop-hole in the bill. This amendment would have allowed bars and/or restaurants to become private membership clubs by charging a nominal fee to become members. Other states with such exemptions have seen bars charge $1 “membership fees” to meet the terms of a “private membership club” so that they could permit smoking and skirt the law. This amendment was defeated by the close vote of 25 to 23. To see the vote count on this amendment, go to HB 2 Senate Amendment 3.
HB 2 will now return to the House where the House can either agree to the Senate’s version of the bill (known as concurrence) or disagree (knows as non-concurrence) and appoint a conference committee. Stay tuned for next steps for HB 2 in additional updates this week.