DOVER, Del.- It has been 10 years since smoking was banned indoors in Delaware, but restaurants in Kent County are still meeting customers who want to light up inside.
Jessica Lockwood manages Shucker's restaurant in Dover. She checks on customers and makes sure everything runs smoothly, but she is also the cigarette police.
"A lot of out-of-towners come in and I have to stop them from lighting the cigarette in the bar because they don't know about the smoking ban," she said.
Even though the ban has been in effect for a decade, it does not make delivering the bad news to customers any easier.
"They get very angry sometimes when they've been drinking and they can't smoke and they have to go outside, especially when the weather is bad," Lockwood said.
State Sen. David McBride co-sponsored the ban 10 years ago. He said it has changed the culture in Delaware.
"We passed it to allow employees to have a smoke-free environment," he said. "Obviously it translates to customers and so forth also."
The ban has helped decrease the number of smokes in Delaware but Dr. Karyl Rattay of the state Division of Public Health said there is still work to be done.
"We still have about 20 percent of Delawareans who are using tobacco," Rattay said. "We still have a lot of adolescents who are using tobacco."
