A Senate committee Monday gave the statewide smoking ban its first big victory with a close vote to prohibit lighting up in bars and restaurants.
The Senate Finance Committee?s 6-5 vote in favor of the bill was the first time in four attempts that it made it out of committee and now to a floor vote in either chamber.
The full Senate could take its first vote on the ban as early as this week.
Sen. Thomas Middleton, D-Charles, the committee?s chairman, cast the deciding vote.
“Outback can go smoke-free, Olive Garden can go smoke-free, but I voted against this bill because it?s going to hurt the little local places,” said Sen. Kathy Klausmeier, D-Baltimore County, one of two Democrats who joined the committee?s three Republicans in voting against the ban. “They?re not the kind of places most people go to.”
The House Economic Matters Committee was expected to vote on the ban later this week.
The Senate committee added retail tobacco shops and nonprofit civic and fraternal clubs to the list of exempted establishments.
Private homes,cars, hotels and motels were already exempt, as were tobacco shops that used ventilation systems.
Sen. George Della, D-Baltimore City, successfully argued for an amendment to exempt all tobacco shops regardless of whether they used ventilation systems.
“They?re in the business of selling tobacco,” Della said. “It makes sense to exempt them because it puts an undue burden on the small-business people.”
Della also won support for an amendment allowing individual county health departments to grant waivers to small taverns, coffee shops, bars and tearooms.
Della said the smoking ban would hurt small, sole-proprietor businesses frequented by senior citizens and neighborhood residents.
The committee also approved an amendment to exempt nonprofit clubs such as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars from the ban.
“We don?t segregate smokers and nonsmokers in the rural areas,” said Sen. E.J. Pipkin, an Eastern Shore Republican who supported the amendment offered by Sen. George Edwards, R-Garrett County.
Pipkin and Edwards argued that the local clubs in rural areas often provided the only social atmosphere available to residents.
“There?s already a problem of isolation in the rural areas, and without this amendment you?re telling the smokers to stay home,” Pipkin said. “And that?s a bad thing.”
