Updates to the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act

This year the Colorado General Assembly passed legislation updating the Clean Indoor Air Act. HB19-1076 includes several major updates to the 2006 law, which bans smoking indoors in public places:

• Vaping and e-cigarettes are now included in the ban, which means that they cannot be used indoors in public places. This is intended to curb vaping among Colorado teens, who vape at twice the rate of the national average, according to a press release from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
• Previously, smoking was not allowed within fifteen feet of the entrance to a public building. The new legislation increases the distance to twenty-five feet. This change came about from data collected in the Colorado School of Public Health’s The Attitudes and Behaviors Surveys (TABS) on Health, a survey which reported that entryways were among the places Coloradans most frequently have to deal with secondhand smoke.
• The updates also take away exemptions for smoking in designated areas of airports. Additionally, under the previous law, hotels and motels could designate up to 25% of their rooms as allowing smoking; this exemption has also been removed.

The Clean Indoor Air Act aims to reduce Coloradans’ exposure to secondhand smoke and nicotine. You can read more about the original law in several publications from our library, including Colorado Legislative Council Issue Briefs from 2006 and 2016. (The law was amended in 2013 to include smoking marijuana). Also in our collection is Indoor Air Pollution at Work and Play: A Study of Air Quality in Hospitality Venues Before and After the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act, published by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Search our online catalog for additional resources on smoking, tobacco, and marijuana.