A few weeks after applying to the Jerusalem District Court for recognition of a NIS 100 million class-action suit against Egged’s Jerusalem Bus Station for allowing illegal smoking in the platform area, the head of the National Council for the Prevention of Smoking is doing the same in the Tel Aviv District Court against the New Central Bus Station.This time Lawyer Amos Hausner is representing another lawyer, Sagi Agmon, who complained to him that he uses the Tel Aviv depot at least twice a week and is regularly exposed to tobacco smoke against his will.Agmon said that the station has installed ash trays all around and that they were filled with cigarette butts. Not only customers but also bus drivers and storekeepers were smoking, he said, thus violating the law that prohibits smoking in public areas and puts the responsibility for enforcing the law squarely on the owners and managers of these places.There is no one to complain to about illegal smoking, and while there is a smoking room, many people do not use it, Agmon said. Hausner told The Jerusalem Post that the bus station in Tel Aviv is frequented by 100,000 people daily and is so large that to reach the terminals on the sixth and seventh floors, one must go through the smoke-filled third and four floors. Agmon added that from his experience, the guards at the entrance do not ask smokers to put their cigarettes out, and the ash trays are a clear invitation to smoke. The head of the National Council said that when Agmon wrote to the Tel Aviv bus station heads, they did not deny that the station had plenty of smokers lighting up on the premises but excused themselves, saying that “it is a large station, and we do what we can [to enforce the law].” According to the law, smokers who light up in public places can get a minimum fine of NIS 1,000, while owners and managers are liable to a NIS 5,000 fine for each instance.
