Lawmakers to review smoking ban

Publication Date: 2008-11-28

• Publication:Billings Gazette

A legislative committee plans to review a draft bill for a statewide smoking ban when it meets in Cheyenne next week.

Wyoming and Alaska are the only Western states without some form of smoking ban in public places.

A proposed statewide smoking ban made little headway in the Wyoming Legislature in 2007 and 2008.

Some state lawmakers say businesses should be free to decide whether to allow smoking, and people should be free to decide whether to patronize such businesses. Proponents of a statewide smoking ban say that's not fair for waiters, bartenders and others who work in places that are filled with dangerous secondhand smoke.