Workplace Smoking Rules in Maine

General provisions. Smoking in the workplace is prohibited, except in designated smoking areas, if prohibited by a written employer policy. However, an employer's policy may prohibit smoking in the workplace completely.

Employers covered. Employers with one or more employees.

Written policy requirements. Employers in Maine — including the state and its political subdivisions — who employ one or more employees must establish a written policy concerning smoking and nonsmoking by employees in their business facilities (a structurally enclosed location or portion of a structurally enclosed location at which employees perform services for their employer), unless the business facility also serves as a personal residence. In order to protect the employer and employees from the detrimental effects of smoking by others, the policy must prohibit smoking except in designated smoking areas.

The policy may designate smoking areas, or it may prohibit smoking throughout a business facility. The employer must post and supervise the implementation of the policy, and provide a copy of the policy to any employee upon request. An employer may solicit help from the Bureau of Health in developing a smoking in the workplace policy. The law does not apply to any business facility where policies concerning smoking have been mutually agreed upon by the employer and all employees.

Posting requirements. Signs must be posted conspicuously in buildings where smoking is regulated by law. Designated smoking areas must have signs that read "Smoking Prohibited" with letters at least one inch high. Places where smoking is prohibited must have signs that read "No Smoking" with letters at least one inch high or the international symbol for no smoking.

No smoking areas. Public places. Smoking is prohibited in Maine in all enclosed areas of public places and all rest rooms made available to the public. A public place is any place not open to the sky into which the public is invited or allowed but does not include private residences, taverns and lounges, motel and hotel rooms rented to the public, private offices when no member of the public is present, retail stores under 2,000 square feet that primarily sell tobacco products and privately chartered buses. Smoking is not prohibited in enclosed areas of public places when the facility is not open to the public.

Restaurants. Restaurants must provide a no-smoking area for customers, reasonably calculated to address the needs of the nonsmoking public. The law does not prevent a restaurant from designating more than 50 percent of its indoor seating as nonsmoking or all of its indoor seating as nonsmoking.

Restaurants must prominently display — at or near the entrance — a sign indicating their policy on seating smokers and nonsmokers and encourage customers to make their seating requests known. If a host or hostess seats customers and indicates verbally at the time of seating the restaurant's smoking policy and the location of the smoking and nonsmoking areas in the restaurant, no signs need be posted.

Designated smoking areas. A smoking area may be designated in an enclosed public place so long as no sales, services or other commercial or public activities are conducted in that area. Designates smoking areas must be physically separated from nonsmoking areas.