Stories

A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Iowa’s Smokefree Air Act has been dismissed after coalition of Iowa bar owners decided to drop their court challenge.
The lawsuit was filed last year by Choose Freedom Iowa, the Iowa Bar Owners Coalition, Clinton’s Organized Bar & Restaurant Owners and Froehlich Properties Inc. just as the state’s smoking ban [...]

Doug Burns at Iowa Political Alert has an interesting post on how Gov. Chet Culver’s proposed $700 million infrastructure plan could mean the end of Iowa’s six-month-old state smoking ban.
In laying out his plan, Culver said he would use $56 million annually from gaming tax revenues to secure the $700 million in bonds over the [...]

The American Lung Association has given Iowa an “A” in providing a smoke-free environment for its citizens, but in other categories the Hawkeye State didn’t fair as well.
Iowa received an “F” for tobacco prevention spending, a “C” for the cigarette tax which ranks 20th highest in the nation and an “F” for cessation coverage.
Iowa is [...]

Iowa has spent nearly all of the money it gained from suing tobacco companies in the 1990s, according to a report by Radio Iowa.

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 [...]

In a debate that lasted nearly five hours, the Iowa State House passed a statewide ban on smoking in public places Tuesday night 56-44, with bi-partisan support.  The bill was the strongest of several anti-smoking proposals that the legislature was set to consider this session.

Although the bill was sponsored by a large group of Democrats, [...]

(Commentary) If the measure of being a good Christian lies in not judging others, then the most devout people in the nation, the ones who truly don’t need to look to the “What Would Jesus Do?” wristbands, can be found in the remaining smoking lounges of U.S. airports.

These places are peopled with live and let-die [...]

The Des Moines Register just published a commentary I wrote on the smoking debate in Iowa.
If Iowans are still reading Mark Twain these days, they may remember one of the American humorist’s more famous lines: “Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” In the discussion of smoking in contemporary America, that seems to be [...]