The Alexandria City Council passed a bill on Saturday that would effectively ban smoking in restaurants in the city. The council has to vote again on the measure, which makes changes to use permit regulations that would require restaurants to go smoke free, before it would go into effect, and that vote isn’t planned until after the next Virginia General Assembly session ends. Alexandria officials are hoping the General Assembly will pass its own state-wide restaurant smoking ban before they have to.

Still, it’s remarkable to note that Alexandria is the very first city in Virginia to attempt passing a smoking ban bill. Despite being located in a state perhaps best known for its love affair with tobacco, Northern Virginia in general and Alexandria in particular have for a long time now been populated by people who feel more like they’re a part of the D.C. metro area, so it makes sense this is where we’d expect to find the first attempt at change. But given that banning smoking in restaurants has been common across the country for over a decade, it feels shockingly behind the times that Alexandria is just now starting to grapple with this issue.

Opponents of the ban are making the same old arguments — that it would hurt businesses’ bottom lines, that it’s fascistic to force private owners to change their policies against their will, and so on — even though if anything, research shows that having smoke-free restaurants actually attracts a lot more diners than it repels. Banning smoking in bars anywhere in Virginia may never happen, but certainly moving toward smoke-free restaurants, especially in Northern Virginia if not in the whole state, is an idea whose time has come.