On the way to a smoke-free TA Central Station

After Jerusalem terminal, now Tel Aviv bus station in line of fire of smoking-prevention lawyer.

By JUDY SIEGEL
environment protest 311 (photo credit: Ehud Zion Waldoks)
environment protest 311
(photo credit: Ehud Zion Waldoks)
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 Postthat the bus station in Tel Aviv is frequented by 100,000 people dailyand is so large that to reach the terminals on the sixth and seventhfloors, one must go through the smoke-filled third and four floors.Agmon added that from his experience, the guards at the entrance do notask smokers to put their cigarettes out, and the ash trays are a clearinvitation to smoke.
The head of the National Council said that when Agmon wrote to the TelAviv bus station heads, they did not deny that the station had plentyof smokers lighting up on the premises but excused themselves, sayingthat “it is a large station, and we do what we can [to enforce thelaw].”
According to the law, smokers who light up in public places can get aminimum fine of NIS 1,000, while owners and managers are liable to aNIS 5,000 fine for each instance.