CMV: Montana's 'Clean Indoor Air Act' is too strict and should be relaxed.

In Montana we have something called the Clean Indoor Air Act. What this does is prevent smoking in all public establishments.

Now lets get this out of the way. I'm not saying that it should be repealed. I believe when the law was put in place it absolutely was the correct thing to do. It has flipped the standard in Montana from smoking to non smoking. This was a great change and means that I can go into a restaurant and have nice clean breathable air instead of choking on cigarette smoke while I'm trying to eat.

The problem comes with how strict it remains. In Montana you CANNOT have an establishment even vaguely open to the public and allow smoking. If you want to have a private smoking club it must have some form of locking system that keeps the doors locked at all times and is 100% only accessible to the members. If you have any unlocked doors in which a member of the public may accidentally stumble into your private smoking establishment; that is grounds for the state to shut you down.

Now about me. I am a cigar and pipe smoker and belong to one of these private clubs. Despite the fact that I enjoy these things, I want most of the establishments to be non-smoking. This position is held by every single club member I have talked to. Every single one of my friends that are cigarette smokers also holds this exact same position.

What the position most of us hold on the relaxing of the law is to allow for special dispensation so that select businesses can open smoking establishments. In the state we already have extremely controlled liquor licensing and the idea would be to use the same style of system to allow a select number of smoking establishments of different types into areas of the state. I would like to be able to go to **A** (Singular, Just 1) Coffee & Pipe shop. I would like to be able to go to **A** cigar bar. It would be nice to be able to go to these special establishments. And with a limit on the number of licenses given by district it wouldn't turn every bar into a smoking bar again. We would just have select specialized establishments to cater to this specific demographic.