Indiana smoking ban advocates push cause at New Albany event

The event, billed as a town hall meeting, featured five panelists and moderator Karla Sneegas, executive director of the Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Agency. All were ban supporters, and the gathering was hosted at Cancer Care Center by Floyd County Tobacco Prevention and Cessation.

Panelist Lindsay Grace of the American Lung Association said Indiana is “the ashtray of the Midwest.”

“We really are becoming surrounded by smoke-free states and cities,” Grace said, including Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa, along with Louisville and Lexington in Kentucky.

Nationally, depending on whose count you use, she said, 23 to 29 states covering 63 percent of the U.S. population have workplace smoking bans that do not allow for exceptions or designated smoking areas.

There are 12 local smoke-free areas in Indiana such as Bloomington, West Lafayette and Elkhart that cover 8.7 percent of the state’s population, Grace said. Closer to home, Jeffersonville has a public smoking ban while proposed bans have been defeated in New Albany and Clarksville.

The statewide proposal in Indiana, House Bill 1018, contains exceptions for such places as bars, casinos, private clubs and horse racing facilities. Unlike previous bans passed by the House, this one “for the first time ever” received a hearing Wednesday in the Senate Public Policy Committee, Grace said.

She said a committee vote is expected next Wednesday.

The American Lung Association and other ban advocates oppose the exceptions in the bill, Grace said, “so it is our hope that we get it cleaned up and put bars and taverns back in and tighten up some other language.”

The usual ban advocates have been joined by One Southern Indiana, the chamber of commerce for Floyd and Clark counties.

One Southern Indiana Chairman Kevin Hammersmith said the organization supports a statewide smoking ban “in recognition of the message that it sends that Indiana values the health of its citizens.”

He said the organization feels “that there’s a direct correlation between no smoking and companies that look to come to Indiana for their workers.”