Just when it looked like a statewide public smoking ban was dead for another year — thanks to House Health and Human Services Committee Chairwoman Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita — senators took another tack last week that has yet to play out. Even if the proponents don’t prevail this session, the ban surely will keep coming back until it passes the House as well as the Senate, which approved it on a 26-13 vote. That’s the only responsible action the Legislature can take, given the increasing cost burden of smoking-related illnesses on the state and the U.S. surgeon general’s 2006 declaration that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. As state health director Jason Eberhart-Phillips said, “We’ll have to make the case better and keep at it and find what appeal can get through. We’ll have to make the obvious benefits to Kansas — to its economy, to its health — resonate with the lawmakers.”
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