News In Brief

How San Francisco copes as nonsmoking law debuts

There's a new market here for battery-powered smokeless ashtrays. Companies here - forced by a new antismoking ordinance that went into effect Thursday requiring them to make arrangements for nonsmokers - are installing the smokeless ashtrays and moving nonsmoking workers closer to windows and other ventilation outlets.

Under the provision - one of the toughest antismoking measures ever adopted in the United States - companies must ban smoking if even a single nonsmoker is not satisfied with arrangements worked out between those who smoke and those who don't.