Many thought this was the year. But Rep. Myra Crownover, R-Denton, acknowledged on Saturday that a measure establishing a statewide smoking ban in Texas is dead.
Crownover blamed its failure on a “handful” of Senate conferees who refused to keep a smoking ban amendment on Senate Bill 1811, a sweeping fiscal matters bill. She said the amendment would have saved taxpayers $30 million in Medicaid spending over the next biennium.
The smoking ban language that had been added by the House was taken out by the Senate on Thursday. Crownover had hoped to get it back in, but clearly that didn’t happen.
“I am proud of the work we did this session. We passed this legislation in committee in both chambers and won a major victory on the House floor,” Crownover said. “Science, logic and reasoning are on our side now, and ten years from now the idea of smoking in a restaurant will be as bizarre an idea as smoking on an airplane is today.”
Crownover said by raw numbers, she had a majority of votes in both the House and Senate to pass the smoking ban. But because of Senate rules, which require a two-thirds vote to bring bills to the floor, “a unified minority” blocked her legislation.
Which suggests to me Rep. Crownover will face the same problem next time as well. Not that it will stop her, nor should it. Trail Blazers has more.
Awww, and it’s supposedly sad the Texas smoking ban proposal died in yet another biennial legislative session? Heck no, since antis already are free to carefully plan their travel to smoke-free establishments and/or cities/towns/communities that were stupid enough to enact total smoking bans, and leave the communities and businesses that were smart enough to respect free choice on the smoking issue alone! The business owners catering to smokers know that if there was more money to be made by going completely smoke-free, that they would’ve done it years ago. Not to mention, many have tried it, and proved what would happen to their business if they had to comply with a complete smoking ban, such as this nightclub in Indianapolis who tried a no-smoking policy for over a month(I’ll note that some other Indy nightclubs that tried smoke-free policies did decide to stick to them, such as Crackers Comedy Club, Talbott Street, Greg’s, Jazz Kitchen, Brothers, to name several examples, and many more besides these examples did so. kudos to these places if they like a total no-smoking policy better, why can’t there be free choice?):
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/21492414/detail.html
If any bills should pass, it’s one banning the sale of ANY tobacco products from being sold anywhere in Texas, that way lawmakers aren’t being hypocritical collecting state tax revenues off of its use, and selfishly prohibiting tobacco use in as many indoor and outdoor places as possible. And as proven to be the ultimate goal of anti-smoking lobbyists(after a partial ban is approved, to keep coming back to local and state governments each legislative session, till all exemptions are removed. very glad antis didn’t get a foot in the door in Texas!):
http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf
Prepare to be disgusted, this is how strict an anti-smoking organization(Americans for Non-Smokers Rights) wants local city/town/county/etc. and state smoking bans to be. In fact, the revised March 2011 model ordinance is now super strict, that it no longer includes any sort of allowance for any motel rooms to be designated for smoking, even if a motel/hotel wanted to have a limited allowance under 25% of its rooms to permit smoking. In the last 2 years, exemptions for private clubs and retail tobacco stores/hookah bars/cigar bars have been removed from ANR’s model ordinance, as well:
http://no-smoke.org/pdf/modelordinance.pdf
A complete tobacco sales prohibition bill was actually proposed 8 years ago in North Dakota’s legislature, and the same hypocritical organizations(i.e. American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, and several other groups) that tried to lobby for a 2011 Texas state smoking ban bill all came out. Due to how much influence these selfish anti-smoking groups have had over so many state lawmakers across the country recent years, only 4 state representatives(out of 92 who voted on this bill, it sadly failed 88-4) had the balls to vote in favor of this bill:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/827172/posts