Restaurants and Tobacco

Smoke free welcome The Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act helps protect the health of restaurant and bar workers and patrons by eliminating secondhand smoke exposure in nearly all workplaces of Colorado. The law also extends to casinos. Secondhand smoke, like first hand smoke, contains over 4,000 toxic chemicals and can cause cancer and other ailments even to non-smokers.

If your restaurant needs signage about no smoking and not smoking within 15-feet of an entryway.  Also, as a reminder, it is part of the health inspection report that no smoking or tobacco use should be occurring in the kitchen area of any restaurant and employees should always wash their hands after returning from a smoking or any other break.

As part of employee wellness activities at restaurants, tobacco use should be addressed along with exercise, healthy eating and proper rest. Quitting or not using tobacco is the single most important thing a person can do to maintain and improve health. Employees who do not use tobacco are more productive, take fewer and shorter breaks, are not sick as often and demonstrate better hygiene.

Encourage employees to call the Colorado Quitline at 1-800-QUIT-NOW to receive free nicotine patches and coaching on how to quit. Tobacco users are about eight times as likely to quit with the patch and individualized counseling (like the quitline) as they would by doing it on their own (cold turkey). For more information about tobacco issues in Weld County, please call the Weld County Tobacco Program at (970) 304-6470 ext. 2123.


More Information

Contact

Colorado Quitline
http://www.coquitline.org/
1-800-QUIT-NOW
Health Communication, Education and Planning
1555 N. 17th Ave.
Greeley, CO 80631
Phone:(970) 304-6470 ext. 2123
Fax:(970) 304-6452