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 went into effect. The suit claimed that the ban was unconstitutional.

The groups sought a temporary restraining order against enforcement of the ban while the lawsuit worked its way through the courts, but a judge last August refused to grant the order.

One of the plaintiffs, Brian Froehlich of Wilton, told the Associated Press that the group was “redirecting their efforts and will support the bars that are going to court to protect their businesses.”

In a statement released after the lawsuit’s dismissal, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said there are 44 liquor license enforcement actions involving the smoking ban currently before the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division.

“We will continue to support enforcement of the law and defend any challenges to the constitutionality of the law,” Miller said. “The great majority of Iowa businesses are obeying the law, and we will not allow a small minority to flout it.”

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 next 20 years. Burns hypothesizes that tying the state’s future to gaming money will mean it must protect the industry from possible losses, which brings us to the smoking ban.

But should a court case rule the Iowa casino exemption as out of line, lawmakers, who had tied the state’s finances to casino money, may have to opt to just kill the entire ban rather than add gaming houses to it and risk the financial fallout.

Burns then points to a Chicago Tribune story that says revenues at Illinois casinos dropped 20.2 percent between November 2007 and November 2008, and the industry points squarely to the smoking ban that went into effect a year ago. Smoking ban opponents point out that neighboring states without smoking bans have not seen nearly that kind of revenue drop.

Now not everyone buys that theory, as the country has also experienced a bit of an economic downturn since their smoking ban was issued. But that’s hardly the point. Would the fear of a possible downturn in revenues at casinos push legislators to rethink the smoking ban?

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 one of 24 states and the District of Columbia to pass anti-smoking legislation.

Cigarette makers agreed in 1998 to pay up to $2 billion to Iowa over 25 years. In 2002, the state sold off the rights to most of those payments for about $500 million in immediate cash. The plan then was to funnel the money into a standing fund whose earnings would pay for anti-smoking campaigns, cancer treatment and other tobacco-related expenses. But the state hit hard budget times, and legislators dipped into the fund for other needs, critics say.

Former Republican state Sen. Jeff Lamberti of Ankeny help put together the deal for the trust fund. Lamberti says there was talk of the tobacco companies going into bankruptcy to avoid paying some of the settlement, so the lump sum deal made sense.

“The model was good other states were doing it. I think in hindsight the thing we’ve learned is if government has an unrestricted pot of money to spend they will spend it and that’s unfortunate because I think the model was the right model for us to do,” Lamberti says.

American Cancer Society lobbyist Cathy Calloway said the idea that cigarrette companies were going to go bankrupt was always “preposterous.” She now worries about finding funding for tobacco prevention and programs to help people stop smoking. Her group opposed the 2002 sale of future payments.

Sen. Jack Hatch, D-Des Moines, said the money had to be used to fund rapidly increasing health care costs.

“So this is going to happen, it’s not that were spending the money wrong we just don’t have enough of it to spend,” Hatch says.

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 Carroll and Storm Lake and Denison, places often peopled with a majority of smokers, to get health-club, celery stalk-sucking religion by July 1.Culver’s surrogates tell us to expect Iowa’s Democratic governor to sign House File 2212 next Tuesday amid much fanfare and here-heres.

But Culver is missing a defining opportunity to reach out to rural Iowa, to show with a veto (or a silent pen) that he understands there is a  difference between Clive and Carroll, Iowa City and Storm Lake, that there is an urban nannyism, a know-bettering in this legislation which clearly will hit long-standing taverns in shot-and-a-beer rural Iowa more than the city establishments.

Stick with your initial instinct, governor, and don’t sign this legislation. Send it back to the divided chambers (the votes were close) and ask for a local-control bill, the plan you talked about in your Condition of the State speech – and the one you told me in Carroll a few weeks ago still made the most sense.

Use this high-profile bill to send a message to rural Iowa: We matter. Our small businesses are important.

We don’t want to live like automatons in the Des Moines suburbs.

Show lawmakers in both parties that you are relevant. Be a maverick. Don’t sign this bill. Much of rural Iowa will not forget it – and where are the anti-smoking forces going to go in 2010 – to U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, or another conservative, free-market Republican challenger who will use the ban against you?

Already challenged by well-documented population loss, higher gas prices and other factors, the smoking ban likely will be a death blow to small town institutions.

How can you exempt Prairie Meadows, which will turn more millions based on that loophole, and then force it on small-town bar owners, who are fighting for hundreds of dollars?

The bill fails to take into account a reality of life in small-town Iowa.

When the smokers are chased out of the taverns (they are addicted so quitting overnight is not likely) there is no replacement class of non-smoking customers waiting in the wings to fill the bar stools. It’s not like New York City or Chicago where a ready population of non-smokers can compensate for the business losses.

What should anger all Iowans is that legislators used the smoking debate as a diversion from truly meaningful work that would lift our state.

With the potential to turn Iowa into something of a Saudi Arabia of renewable energy, and pressing educational concerns, the signature accomplishment of the 2008 session is a law that will take a cigarette out of the hands of a working stiff in Le Mars who is just trying to get through a tough week with the comfort of a few Buds and a convivial smoke.

Legislators can count.

There are more non-smokers than smokers.

This one is a crowd-pleaser for the majority of Iowans for whom broader issues like property rights and individual freedom and rural-versus-urban dynamics don’t register.

But many of us in rural Iowa are paying attention. Culver could make a huge political statement with a veto of the smoking by casting it as an attack on rural freedoms.

Governor, at least consider this: buck conventional wisdom, show the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate it’s your show – that the Senate majority leader isn’t the shadow governor.

Kill this bill.

It will not be forgotten for a generation of Novembers in small towns out here in western Iowa, governor.

Although the bill was sponsored by a large group of Democrats, eight Republicans sided with the majority party and voted in favor of the measure and eight Democrats voted against it.

“Second hand smoke kills 440 non-smokers in Iowa every year and another 4,000 Iowans die each year from smoking-related illnesses,” said State Rep. Tyler Olson, D-Cedar Rapids. “The bill approved today will save lives and protect 99 percent of Iowans in the work place and public places.”

If enacted, the legislation will ban smoking in bars, restaurants, businesses, some farms, and state-owned outdoor areas where members of the public assemble.

“We know that workers in the hospitality industry, including my sister, have a 50 percent greater chance of dying from lung cancer than the general population,” said State Representative Elesha Gayman, D-Davenport. “These hard-working Iowans do not get to decide if their workplace is smoke free and they should not have to put their health in jeopardy to provide for their families.”

The bill would also ban smoking within 10 feet of the entrance of any building that falls under the ban.  And it may ban smoking on the grounds of the Iowa State Fair, though that question remained unsettled when legislators cast their votes.

Casinos, however, were exempted from the ban by an amendment.

The bill now heads to the Iowa Senate, which is also controlled by Democrats.  If it passes there, it will land on Gov. Culver’s desk for signature.

These places are peopled with live and let-die folks. It’s like being at the horse track. No one judges you. You can be 200 pounds overweight and missing an arm and people just don’t care.

Which is why none of us in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport smoking lounge a while ago said anything about the unmistakably pregnant woman dragging down a cigarette in the facility.

Now, of course, pregnant women shouldn’t smoke or drink or do any number of things. Some pregnant woman shouldn’t even be pregnant.

When you see a pregnant woman firing up a smoke the “It Takes a Village” part of the brain wells up in you to the point where you believe confrontation is the correct course.

But, then again, if the woman can legally have an abortion, then it’s sort of pointless to tell her she can’t smoke.

“Oh, you think I should put my cigarette down just because I’m pregnant,” I imagined her saying. “Good point. I’ll just go get an abortion.”

Then there’s always that great fear that said woman is not in fact pregnant, that she has developed the corpulence of a McDonald’s regular or a beer bulge. About the worst thing a man can do to a woman is refer to her as pregnant when she’s not. I’ve done it, and vowed never to repeat the mistake.

In the not-to-distant future, smoking around kids may be illegal. Bangor, Maine, passed an ordinance banning smoking in cars in which any of the passengers are under age 18. At least one judge decided a custody battle based solely on the fact that one parent smoked and the other didn’t.

Clearly people shouldn’t smoke around kids (another argument to allow smoking in limited public places like bars so smokers can gather together and spare their families).

That being said, if the government intervenes in the smoking arena, then is a child’s diet next?

Will Happy Meals be banned? Will parents with deep fat fryers be fined?

The Associated Press reported some alarming numbers with weight issues involving high school football players in Iowa. Do we start to prosecute pushy coaches and parents?

In the end, had this woman been someone I knew, had some connection or relationship with, I would have said something about the smoking.

But she was a stranger.

And I see strangers doing things as parents all the time that I find abhorrent. There are the ones who constantly demean and diminish their kids with cruel comments. The psychological damage surely rivals second-hand smoke in terms of life impact. You also see kids running roughshod over parents, doing whatever they please, showing about as much discipline as a cocaine-and-sex addict with a winning lottery ticket.

Unlike the 1970s, when I was growing up, parents are not too keen on being told anything about their kids by teachers or neighbors, much less strangers.

Short of seeing a kid being physically abused or abducted (where we have a duty to act) there’s not much of a role for the concerned stranger these days.

People are making the case that smoking around a kid is a form of physical abuse even though the child may grow up just fine. Additionally, if you use the smoking-as-child battery logic, the choice to live in pollution-filled cities, like New York City, instead of in the cleaner-air environment of, say, South Dakota, would also be a form of abuse as well.

So there you have it. All of this considered, would any of you say something to a pregnant woman you don’t know and will never see again who is smoking?

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 the primary motivation of many.

If the Legislature does wade in to the issue then a local control bill is preferrable.

Clearly, cities with casinos and the tens of thousands of smoking patrons attendant with those businesses or the shot-and-beer towns in rural Iowa with blue-collar rhythms of life would have a different take on smoking than the effete Des Moines suburbs, communities in which Pottery Barn and Gap-shopping conformists opt for lattes and spinning classes over cigarettes to deal with the stresses of the day.