Stories

Some Iowa legislators are considering allowing limited gambling in bars to help them offset losses due to the Iowa smoking ban and to deal with the grossly unfair advantage casinos have with their smoking exemption, according to a story in The Sioux City Journal:
A state lawmaker says a small group of legislators is quietly assembling [...]

Iowa’s sweeping indoor smoking ban has been in effect for two months now but public health officials report that only six “law enforcement” visits have been made to places believed to be in violation. The Iowa Department of Public Health  (IDPH)– charged with overseeing the law and in the process of reviewing draft rules — [...]

Any small town Iowa city hall reporter knows that when council members get to the routine liquor license renewals they get the rubber stamp of all rubber stamps. All “aye” and on to the next item.

Not so in Clinton, which seems to be something of a front line in a brewing war over the Iowa [...]

A Wilton bar owner who has joined a lawsuit seeking an injunction on the Iowa indoor smoking ban imposed last week says he has hundreds of tavern owners around the state supporting the effort.

“It’s not just business rights,” said Brian Froehlich, owner of Fro’s Pub & Grub in Wilton, about 12 miles north of Muscatine. [...]

Not one person stood at the usually booming smokers’ entrance.

As employees entered the south entrance of a busy West Des Moines office building on Tuesday, the familiar smell of cigarette smoke was gone.

So were the chatty smokers who usually gathered there daily for breaks and lunch outside the building entrance that was affectionately known by [...]

AUDUBON — As other Iowa business owners were downloading “no smoking” signs from the Internet to comply with the first day of a statewide indoor ban, Vickie Ewoldt in Audubon was scrambling for something else.

She was searching for a flag, not an American flag, certainly not Iowa’s.

No, this longtime owner of Vic’s Main Tap wanted [...]

When Frank Sinatra, America’s most famous smoker, died (at age 82 baby), one tribute observed that thousands of men on thousands of bar stools would no longer be able to ask, “What would Frank do?”

Sinatra died in 1998, and we’ve made it a decade with the philosopher-king of love and loss, the crooner with spot-on [...]

As the state works out final details on how Iowa’s sweeping statewide smoking ban will be implemented on July 1, one official tells Iowa Independent that bars will be allowed to have patios where patrons can smoke.

“In the law, bars can have smoking on their patio,” said Bonnie Mapes, director of Tobacco Use, Prevention [...]

Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) officials charged with implementing the state’s sweeping smoking ban are scurrying to iron out a plan for enforcement before the law takes effect July 1.

Gov. Chet Culver won’t veto the ill-conceived, anti-rural and laughably hypocritical imposition of  Prohibition-era busy-busybodying ban on smoking in Iowa’s taverns.

In fact, two of Culver’s top spokespeople already are on record heralding this week`s passage of the strict smoke ban that, of course, exempts the money-minting casinos, but tells owners of bars in Audubon and [...]