Lawmakers have quietly made it tougher for smokers to find a public place to light up. A committee of lawmakers has tweaked a definition in the Smoke Free Illinois Act to ban smoking in any public place with a floor and ceiling, whether or not the walls are retractable or permeable.
That has restaurant and bar owners wondering if those beer gardens they built to give smokers a spot to smoke might soon be smokeless beer gardens. The state's health department won't comment on the fate of beer gardens. But a spokeswoman says that the new language might clarify an act that has long been so vague that it has proven all but impossible to enforce.