Group cites study in push to ban smoking

BOISE – An Idaho group is raising a stink over the state’s last remaining indoor smoking refuges, hoping a new study of air pollution in bars adds momentum to efforts to get cities to also snuff out cigarettes and stogies in drinking establishments.

The state already forbids smoking in all public buildings, but that 2004 prohibition had an exception for bars where patrons must be over 21.

The Coalition for a Healthy Idaho study, released this week by the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, is the latest salvo in its 18-month campaign to shield workers and patrons from secondhand smoke. The study looked at air quality in bars in Boise, Meridian and Garden City and found air in saloons with smoking is 36 times more polluted than the air outside.

“This study shows precisely why city councils in Idaho should implement comprehensive smoke-free ordinances covering all indoor workplaces and all workers,” said Shauneen Grange, coordinator for the coalition’s Smokefree Idaho campaign.

Coalition members include Blue Cross of Idaho, Boise State University Center for Health Policy, the American Cancer Society and more than a dozen other health groups.

Following Idaho’s 2004 ban on smoking in most public places, efforts to expand the prohibition have had mixed results.

For instance, banning smoking in Idaho bowling alleys proved no easy task. Two-thirds of the state House voted against a measure in 2006. A year later, a similar bill was resurrected only after the House and Senate voted to override Gov. Butch Otter’s veto. It’s now state law.

In 2008, a House committee killed a measure that would have banned smoking in vehicles carrying children under 13 years old.

At least three Idaho campuses ban smoking: Boise State University, the College of Southern Idaho and Brigham Young University in Rexburg.

And while the college town of Moscow in northcentral Idaho banned smoking inside bars earlier this year, suburban Eagle near Boise balked at similar measure. City councilors’ reasoning: Banning smoking could hurt businesses already struggling to attract patrons amid a sluggish economy.

In 2004, similar worries were at the heart of Idaho Lodging and Restaurant Association opposition to that year’s legislative smoking ban.

On Tuesday, Pam Eaton, executive director of the group, said she currently has no traditional bars as members and that her restaurant members haven’t taken an official vote on whether taverns and saloons should face the same smoking restrictions restaurant owners have lived with for five years.

At least 24 states and more than 350 cities have comprehensive bans on smoking at workplaces, restaurants and bars, according to the American Cancer Society’s tally. That’s more than in 2004, when at least eight states and 163 municipalities banned all smoking in restaurants.