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Come Dec. 1, Virginia will join a growing number of states banning smoking in restaurants (except for private clubs, outdoor seating, and designated smoking areas in a separate room from the main dining area, in Virginia's case).

My colleague, Jenny Kincaid Boone, has a story on what the change means in the Sunday, Sept. 27, Roanoke Times.

As part of that, we decided to look at which places had the farthest to go to become smoke-free. I obtained from the Virginia Department of Health, the agency that inspects restaurants, data including the smoking status of more than 16,000 full-service and fast-service restaurants in Virginia.

And it turns out that statewide, some 70 percent of those restaurants are already non-smoking. And the Roanoke and New River Valleys are just about there, too, with about 68 percent of restaurants smoke-free.

(One caveat about the data: the smoking status is based on what was recorded during a health department inspection, and some of the dates on these status are months old, and might have changed.)

We took the data and stuck it on a map to see just where the stragglers are. Now, 16,000 restaurants is a lot of points to map, so we rolled the data up into percentages for each city and county, and that's what you'll find on the map. It's a cool interactive, and you can make all sorts of changes to it, including changing which data is shown on the map. There are instructions at the bottom of the page.

It struck me that, really, there aren't any dramatic and obvious patterns to where non-smoking restaurants are. I thought maybe rural areas would have fewer non-smoking places. But look at Craig County. It has five restaurants, and all are smoke-free. Look at the Shenendoah Valley. The whole spine of it has a high percentage of non-smoking restaurants. My best guess on that is that it's influenced by Interstate 81, and the number of fast-food restaurants near interchanges. Fast food restaurants are routinely smoke-free these days.

Switch the map over to the percentage of restaurants which allow smoking in all areas. No great pattern there, either. I thought that the high percentages might correspond with heavy tobacco producing communities, but except for Pittsylvania County, that theory isn't really born out.

But maybe you'll see things that we missed. As always, let us know.

Just over a year after the Amethyst Inititive to re-examine the legal drinking age was launched, 135 college and university presidents have signed on, and just 27 of them are from public colleges.

That same ratio seems to be playing out in Virginia.

Of the seven Virginia college and university presidents who either signed on to the initiative or said they support it in a survey by The Roanoke Times, six lead private schools, and just one is at a public university: Charles Steger of Virginia Tech.

“Unfortunately, as a large university, Virginia Tech experiences the problems associated with college-age drinking all too often,” Steger said in a statement submitted as part of the survey. “The 'binge drinking’ rate at Virginia Tech is 58.4 percent, far above the national average of 42 percent.

“The Amethyst Initiative, fundamentally, seeks to open a nationwide dialogue on misuse of alcohol. I signed the initiative to help facilitate this discussion. I applaud and support that effort.”

In all, 18 of Virginia’s 44 four-year, residential colleges and universities in Virginia completed all or part of the survey, and two more who did not complete the survey have declared their support for the initiative on the Amethyst Initiative Web site.

Five of the schools that responded to the survey said they oppose the initiative, three of them public schools.

Another eight schools said they were undecided in the survey, six of them public.

You can see the first wave of survey responses here. You’ll find an interactive map of all the schools we surveyed and the schools' unabridged answers to the parts of the survey related to our coverage so far in our Under 21 series. The series looks at the Amethyst Initiative and college drinking in general.

The survey responses suggest relatively weak opposition to the initiative, and a lot of indecision about it.

That’s especially true among the state’s taxpayer-supported public colleges, for whom the notion that the 21-year drinking age has led to more clandestine and heavier drinking and ought to be re-considered seems to be a touchy one.

As Longwood University in Farmville pointed out in its survey response, supporting a re-consideration of the legal drinking age can be more complicated for a school that depends on taxpayers.

“We answer to a higher authority and our number one priority has always been, and continues to be, the safety and security of our students,” the school said. “It’s a matter of trust between our students, their parents and us.”

The University of Virginia’s John Casteen, who also said he’s undecided, acknowledged in an address to parents in August 2008 that changing the drinking age to 18 would make life simpler for college administrators, who would then have student bodies almost uniformly of legal drinking age. But he isn’t convinced it would be a good idea on the whole.

“I’ve encouraged the people involved in this Amethyst Initiative … to lay out their evidence to show how they can assert that there is no appreciable difference between behavior at age 18 and behavior at age 21,” he said. “I fear sometimes that part of the motive here is to make the lives of college deans and dorm head residents, and so on, easier. I don’t think that’s the point. But I’m also perfectly willing to be persuaded by good evidence.”

Radford University’s Penelope Kyle found the same lack of compelling evidence reason enough to oppose the initiative.

“There is still no compelling evidence that clearly demonstrates that lowering the drinking age to 18 would, in fact, ameliorate problematic drinking behaviors of college students,” the university said in accounting for Kyle’s position.

While public colleges seem reluctant to sign on, three schools with religious affiliations who responded to the survey support the initiative.

Billy Greer, president of the United Methodist Church-affiliated Virginia Wesleyan, “believes that the proposed 18-year-old requirement for drinking alcoholic beverages is more in line with both the reality of what already occurs and the appropriate rights for that age individual,” the college said in its statement.

A number of religious schools that didn’t complete the survey, such as Regent University and Patrick Henry College, oppose drinking in general, regardless of age.

Generally, the data you find in the DataSphere is found data. It's tables and spreadsheets and databases we've found on government Websites, or obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

But this summer, a database we wanted didn't exist, so we set out to build it ourselves. As part of our ongoing series on the Amethyst Initiative to re-examine the legal drinking age and college drinking in general, we sent a survey to 44 Virginia colleges to gather data on their alcohol policies, enforcement of them, the number of alcohol related disciplinary actions on campus, and each college president's position on the Amethyst Initiative.

The results are in, and you can see the first wave of data from the survey now. It's an interactive map with markers for each of the colleges we surveyed, a digest of part of their responses, and a link to their unabridged answers to some of the questions.

The map and data, along with all of our coverage in the series are collected on a site devoted to our series.

We sent the survey only to four-year colleges with on campus housing, whether public or private. In other words, schools offering some version of traditional campus life. Fewer than half the colleges completed the survey, while several more declined to complete for various reasons, but in most cases because of concerns about how the questions were phrased or that their responses would be handled fairly in being compared to other schools. The remainder simply didn't respond at all.

Still, there's plenty to be learned from the responses we did get. To begin with, we're looking at which school presidents support the Amethyst Initiative, and which don't. As you'll read in my analysis, the idea of re-considering the legal drinking age and possibly lowering it appears to be generating only weak opposition in Virginia. The largest block of those presidents whose positions we documented are undecided.

We're not done with the data, and the most interesting stuff may be yet to come.  With the next installment in the series, we'll be rolling out more of the schools' responses, and layering other data onto the map, such as where the highest volume liquor stores are located in relation to college campuses, where other alcohol sellers are located, and which of them have been caught selling to underage buyers.

In the meantime, post your questions and comments here. I'll be glad to get them.