Senate passes smoking ban bill

Indiana lawmakers have moved closer to enacting a universal, statewide smoking ban. The Indiana Senate passed the bill 29-21 on Feb. 29, but not without first amending a list of exceptions.

In response to amendments added to HB 1149, co-authors Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, and Rep. Eric Turner, R-Cicero, dissented to the changes March 1. The bill will move to a conference committee to negotiate the issue.

“The bill will probably be more like it was when it left the House than when it left the Senate,” Sen. Michael Young, R-Indianapolis, said.

As it stands, Young said, he does not believe the bill will be enacted.

According to the added amendments, bars and taverns could allow smoking as long as they allow only people 21 and older to enter, smoking would be allowed at a business in the owner’s home, residential healthcare and mental care facilities and retirement communities could designate smoking areas, and smoking would be prohibited eight feet outside the doors of a facility that bans smoking, among other  amendments.

“It is a healthcare issue,” Sen. Vi Simpson, D-Ellettsville, said. “We have to find a balance between the rights of smokers, the rights of non-smokers and the rights of businesses.”

But she said workers also have the right to work in a smoke-free environment.

“We have a responsibility to protect individual rights, but we also have to make sure one person’s individual right doesn’t impose on somebody else’s,” Simpson said.

In Indiana, 1,000 people die each year from secondhand smoke, according to Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation.

“When I’m around somebody who smokes, I have to breathe that air,” Simpson said. “I don’t get to choose some other air. It’s shared air, and we know the effects of secondhand smoke.”

While similar legislation has worked its way through the House for the past five years, this is the first time it has been considered by the full Senate. Nationally, Indiana is one of 13 states without a comprehensive smoking ban.

Young disagrees with the amendments added by the Senate because he said it gives preferential treatment to one group of businesses. Young said lawmakers are willing to allow smokers inside casinos because the state is addicted to revenue obtained from casinos.

But for him to support the bill, smoking would need to be banned in all businesses equally. But even better, he said, would be to allow a free market to determine the community’s desires.

“I speak with my feet and dollars that I won’t go somewhere that I don’t think is good for me,” Young said. “The same is true for any consumer. If they don’t like the place because they have smoke, they shouldn’t go there.”