SmokeChoke is a citizen-created registry of businesses who are willfully violating the Ohio smoking ban passed by voters in late 2006. It's here to help you make safe and informed choices
on where you choose to spend your money.

You did! This site is 100% based on user-submissions of violating businesses, and is 100% non-profit and advertisment free.

That's up to you. You may choose to boycott businesses on this list. You may choose to try to avoid them when possible. If you're a hard-core smoker, you may even use this as a list of places to light up.

SmokeChoke is currently only for Ohio businesses. If there's enough demand, other states will be added in the future.

You can't - that's the nature of a democratic site. However, if a falsely-accused business is listed here, others can chime in to disagree. If there are enough who disagree that violations are occuring, it will be updated or removed from the database.

Absolutely. The more confirmations of a given business, the more reputable its listing will be. Even if just to say "yep, they still have ashtrays out", please chime in!

You can post messages in the forum of your restaurant. If you've had a change of heart and decided to ban smoking, drop us a line (email address at the bottom of this page) to explain what's changed. I'll add a special annotation to the restaurant's record on the site.

Note that this site includes violations since the law went into effect - including the period before the penalties were in place.

No messages or users on this site will be deleted unless they're blatantly abusive. Posts to the violation list are only meant for descriptions of violations; if you have an axe to grind with the law, the General Forum is the place for that. General discussion or arguments against the smoking ban will be minimized or moved into the appropriate forum. Repeat trollers will be deleted.

You're exactly right. The Hall of Shame on SmokeChoke is designed to help those who appreciate clean air to find a business who support this choice.

There are many people who share your views. Get together with them during the next election and overturn the ban. In the meantime, please respect the will of the people and follow the law.

The single biggest thing you can do, aside from submitting violators, is to pass this site along to everyone you know. Tell your friends. If you have a blog, post an entry about it. Write to your local newspaper's "Letters to the Editor" page. The more people who find this site, the more comprehensive and useful the list will be!