Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

No smoking would be allowed inside public buildings in Texas — including restaurants, bars and workplaces — if a legislative proposal is approved to make the Lone Star State one of 18 states with sweeping bans on smoking.

"It is a public health crisis and a very expensive one," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who is spearheading the proposal. He said he plans to file a bill at the end of the month and that he will be joined at that time by a coalition of anti-smoking groups as he unveils details.

The proposal is sure to trigger a fight, but not about whether smoking is bad for you; most people agree that it is. While anti-smoking forces are billing the plan as a way to ensure Texas workers get equal access to safe working conditions, defenders of smokers' rights say the government is overstepping its role.

It's an argument playing out across the country. A decade ago, just a few states had banned smoking. Now, between city ordinances and state laws, about half of Americans live in areas where smoking is not allowed inside public places, according to James Gray, Texas government relations director of the American Cancer Society.

"The bottom line is this country is going to be smoke-free within five to eight years," Gray said. "The question is: When is that going to be in Texas?"

In Texas, where a $1-per-pack cigarette tax increase went into effect this month, pushing another smoking-related law through the Legislature could be tricky. And opponents will argue that this is an issue of personal liberty.

"If 20 percent of the population is smokers, why is it so terrible there's a few places they can go and gather?" asked Marc Levin, an attorney who represents Austin bar owners fighting the city's 16-month-old ordinance in court. "No one would disagree that it's a bad habit. But there are a lot of bad habits, and we sometimes have to draw the line about what is the role of government."

The very idea of a statewide smoking ban irks Larry Kelso, owner of the Old Coupland Inn and Dancehall about 30 miles northeast of Austin. There, patrons can smoke in the century-old dance hall, and in the restaurant, and in the bed and breakfast, and on the sidewalk and anywhere else they want to smoke, Kelso said.

"Don't try to legislate what people can do in public places," he said. "You have kind of hit on a sore spot on me. What's next? Are they going to tell us we can't smoke in our own house?"

The proposed state law would override Austin's slightly less strict citywide smoking ban. The city ordinance exempts bingo halls and fraternal organizations and allows smoking until 2012 in 10 restaurants that have installed filtration systems under the existing ordinance.

Austin and El Paso are among some 50 Texas cities that already have comprehensive no-smoking ordinances, and Houston just passed one. Dallas has one that exempts bars.

Several Central Texas cities, including Round Rock, Leander, Georgetown, Rollingwood, West Lake Hills and New Braunfels, also have significant smoke-free ordinances. But it's OK to light up inside restaurants, bars and some workplaces in other cities, including Cedar Park and Pflugerville.

Local ordinances have been chipping away at Texas smokers' ability to light up in public for the past 15 years. Most cities have some kind of smoking restrictions, said Gray of the American Cancer Society.

City ordinances have evolved from creating smoking and non-smoking areas in the late 1980s to adding ventilation systems in the early to mid 1990s to banning smoking in some places in the late 1990s and the early part of this decade. Now, in the past few years, some cities and states have started banning smoking in all public places — even, in some cases, bars.

"People are saying, 'You know what? There's no safe level of secondhand smoke. We want to resolve this issue once and for all,' " Gray said.

In addition to indoor smoking bans, some cities and states also ban smoking in certain outdoor areas.

The smoke-free movement was buoyed last year by a report by U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona that said the health effects of secondhand smoke are worse than previously thought.

"The debate is over," Carmona said in issuing the 700-page report. "The science is clear. Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance but a serious health hazard."

A Texas smoking ban "is about creating a workplace where folks do not have to breathe a known carcinogen," Gray said. It would apply to any business with employees.

For Austin-based singer Sara Hickman, who supported the capital city's ordinance, her workplace is often restaurants and bars around the country. She prefers playing smoke-free venues because smoke, she said, irritates her asthma and allergies. Hickman said she cannot afford health insurance.

"When people are sitting and smoking in front of me, they're not realizing that they're leaving the residue of their health choice in my lungs, and I become financially responsible for it," she said.

One smoker in McAllen, where it's legal to light up inside many public places, said it wouldn't bother him if he wasn't allowed to smoke in restaurants; he could go outside.

"A bar or a nightclub would be a completely different issue," said Alan Fiszman, a political consultant who said he smokes around eight cigarettes a day. "I don't really see why cigarettes would be banned in an establishment that already serves something most health officials would deem unhealthy."

As Ellis works to push his proposal, one challenge may be convincing his colleagues that smoking bans don't hurt business.

On that, there is some debate.

A 2003 report by the state health department showed that the then-year-old ban in El Paso had "no significant adverse changes" in restaurant and bar revenues.

"El Paso has one of the strongest ordinances, and the town didn't turn out the lights," said Joel Romo, vice president of advocacy for the Texas affiliate of the American Heart Association.

But Levin, the bar owners' lawyer, points to declining alcohol sales at Austin bars that allowed smoking until the ordinance went into effect — an average loss of $5,700 per month, according to state sales tax data.

Ellis, who hasn't found a House sponsor for his bill, says he's ready for what will likely be a contentious debate. A statewide smoking ban has been proposed before in Texas, but not with support from a coalition like the one Ellis is working with, which includes the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society.

Under Ellis' proposal, "people can still smoke — it's just less convenient and less likely they'll cause serious bodily harm to someone else.

"It's always a battle when you're taking on big tobacco, no doubt about it, but it's worth the fight," Ellis said.