California has taken another leap forward in efforts to ban indoor smoking, after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 626 into law earlier this month, which closes loopholes in the state’s existing law, from the 1990s, which allowed 20 percent of guestrooms in a hotel, motel, or other similar lodging to permit lighting up.
“California led the nation in the 1990s when it passed laws banning indoor smoking. But, that ban contained a loophole allowing every hotel and motel in California to decide for themselves whether to allow smoking in their rooms … In 2023, it’s time to close that loophole,” the bill’s author Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park) said in a press release last February introducing the bill.
