The National Cancer Institute has joined the growing list of health organizations that are making the smoking laws of a city or state a make-or-break criterion in site selection for their meetings, according to USA Today. All NCI meetings of 20 or more people must be held in areas that have laws restricting smoking in public areas. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health has already instituted a similar policy, and the American Lung Association “probably will consider the question at its fall meeting,” according to the article.
While health organizations with larger conventions are still somewhat restricted in their ability to put a smoke-free site-selection policy in place—only so many cities are able to accommodate the American Heart Association’s 27,000 attendees, for example—this could change as the smoke-free trend continues to spread across the U.S. More than 2,000 municipalities have some sort of public smoking ban in place, and 11 states had passed laws regarding smoking in workplaces, bars, and restaurants as of January 2006.