While the Iowa House Commerce Committee has passed a statewide smoking ban (which exempts casinos and veterans halls), key legislative observers and advocates on the issue expect a competing local-control bill to have the best chance of becoming Iowa law.

A local-control bill had been scheduled to come up in the House Human Resources Committee today, but debate there is delayed, one committee member told Iowa Independent. The bill is expected to emerge, too, giving lawmakers a choice of how to approach smoking in the Hawkeye State.

With more and more cities, states, and even nations, moving on bans or public smoking restrictions, legislators no doubt believe they almost have to act on the matter.

“We support a strong statewide smoke-free air law if it also restores local control,” Kerry Wise of the American Lung Association tells Iowa Independent. “Every other state that has a strong statewide law started at the local level. Our biggest support leans toward local control with no exemptions as we believe our local communities need to be heard on this important issue, and a lot of them have something to say.”

Wise, who recruited experts to testify in the Iowa Legislature, said she thinks “there’s a strong chance” the local-control bill will pass. She says her organization’s strategy is to let city ordinances that don’t have exemptions proliferate, and then use those to collectively springboard a statewide ban later.

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver said in his Condition Of The State speech that he would sign a local-control bill. Culver spokesman Brad Anderson told The Sioux City Journal Tuesday the governor would have to consider signing off on a statewide ban, should the Legislature approve one.

Many restaurant and bar owners see a statewide ban as being potentially devastating to business.

“It would cut business,” says Ben Badding, manager of the long-time family business Kerp’s Tavern in downtown Carroll. “I’d say 65 percent of the people who come in here smoke. I think it should be left up to the business.”

Badding’s representative in Des Moines, Assistant House Minority Leader Rod Roberts, R-Carroll, hears these concerns.

“If I have to choose between one or another, I would certainly opt for local control,” Roberts said. “There is such a difference from one area of the state to another.”

Roberts, now in his eighth year as a legislator, gives the local-control bill the best chance. He thinks the statewide ban is unfair in large part because of the exemption for casinos.

The president and CEO of the Iowa Restaurant Association, Doni DeNucci, tells Iowa Independent her organization sees the issue as a crucial debate on a business’s right to individual decision-making about whether a legal product can be used on its property. Emotional appeals and even health data have no place in the discussion, DeNucci says.

“For us it’s a business issue as long as smoking is legal,” DeNucci said.

She questions arguments from anti-smoking forces who cite data in other states about improved business in the wake of clean indoor-air bills.

“They claim that and they probably pay for a survey that surveys businesses that are doing better,” DeNucci said.

The restaurant association opposes both the local-control and statewide ban bills.

DeNucci said some border businesses in Iowa, such as the Isle of Capri casino in Bettendorf, are seeing “a very significant uptick” in business in the wake of Illinois’ first-of-the-year statewide smoking ban that extended to casinos.

With a local-control bill, DeNucci is worried about what she calls the Clive-West Des Moines scenario where, say the Outback Steakhouse in Clive, may have to go smoke free if the city bans smoking while businesses across University Avenue in West Des Moines at places like Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery could continue lighting up should West Des Moines not pass ban or exempt certain places.

DeNucci predicts that whatever emerges from Iowa lawmakers won’t be good for her 600 members and the 5,000 restaurants and bars in Iowa the association represents.

“With the Democrats in the majority, we’re going to lose,” DeNucci said. “We’re dying on the sword.”

State Rep. Christopher Rants, R-Sioux City, has proposed a third option: requiring ventilation systems in smoking establishments.

According KTIV in Sioux City, he’d like to introduce a third option that would require each restaurant or bar that does have smoking to have a special air filtration system. “There is a third option and that is an air filitration system that if you want to allow smoking in your restaurant or your tavern that you have the technology.”

Local control could take myriad forms with the diverse cultures of Iowa’s communities.

Just weeks ago in Kansas City, the city council passed a ban that includes restaurants but exempted bars. In Maryland, where a statewide ban went into effect Feb. 1, bar owners are actually allowed to apply for waivers if they can prove a certain financial loss.

In Chicago, where an Illinois ban went into effect Jan. 1, there are mixed reports about the effect on business. In short, it’s too early to tell. But there appears to be something of an upside with the singles scene outside of bars, where smokers (or those wanting to make time with smokers) are engaging in what hipsters are calling “smirting” — smoking and flirting. The isolated (banished, some would say) smokers have more of an opportunity to bond, and some men (and women, too) are using the ban to leverage time with potential love connections.

At the end of the day, Iowa smokers know their days likely are numbered for enjoying a convivial cigarette and cocktail inside any public place. Consider this article from U.S. News & World Report from Feb. 11.

In a southern city that owes its bloom to tobacco fields, mounting evidence of the health risks of secondhand smoke is proving an unwelcome carpetbagger. For the second year running, Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine has proposed banning smoking in all eating establishments in Virginia. Here, where even the taverns are required to serve food, a ban would be widely felt. It would also be a blow to one of the state’s top employers and corporate citizens, Philip Morris USA, the maker of Marlboro and the nation’s leading cigarette manufacturer. Reflective of changing times–even Paris has gone smoke free–polls show that Virginians back such a ban.

Out of curiosity, I called two of my favorite bars in states that now have bans — The Crow’s Nest in Gloucester, Mass., and Angry Wade’s in Brooklyn, N.Y., to see how business was with the bans. Bartenders in both places were too busy at about 3 p.m. EST to talk with me.