Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation, a state agency, reports 38 counties or communities in the state have some form of smoking ban.
But bans in Vanderburgh County and Evansville were among just nine that the agency classified as ineffective in 2008, before the county smoking ordinance's exemptions for bars, taverns, businesses and clubs expired on Friday.
Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation faults the city's smoking ban for its exemptions allowing smoking areas in restaurants, bars and taverns.
Those exemptions, which do not expire, require that no one under 18 is permitted inside and that smoking areas are separated from nonsmoking areas by a solid floor-to-ceiling wall with an opening no wider than 60 inches.
"Our report was based on what the U.S. Surgeon General's study and a lot of other studies found about the importance of tobacco prevention," said Miranda Spitznagle, director of program evaluation for Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation.
Report findings
The 2006 Surgeon General's report found secondhand smoke puts nonsmokers, including children, at increased risk of death from lung cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. The report also found that separating smokers from nonsmokers, cleaning the air and using ventilation systems are not completely effective methods of eliminating exposure to secondhand smoke.
Now that the Vanderburgh County Commissioners are on a path to reinstate the county smoking ban's exemptions for bars, taverns, businesses and clubs, the county may be headed back to Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation's "ineffective" list.
That bothers City Councilman H. Dan Adams, a retired cardiac heart surgeon who was elected in 2007 after speaking out for a tough smoking ban.
"I don't see where that makes sense," Adams said. "I don't know whether (the commissioners) are pandering to the bar owners, but they're a minority."
Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation reports that slightly more than 24 percent of Indiana adults were smoking as of 2007, sixth-highest among states in smoking prevalence.
"And two-thirds of those people want to quit, which means the rest of us are being held hostage by about 9 percent of people," Adams said.
Adams cited a raft of studies that he said collectively provide "overwhelmingly compelling" proof that secondhand smoke can cause lung cancer and promote heart disease.
He said secondhand smoke damages the lining of blood vessels and increases the kind of blood clotting that often presage heart attacks. "All the effects that happen to a smoker also happen to people who don't smoke who are exposed to secondhand smoke," he said.
As he did when the city and the county's governing bodies were considering separate smoking bans in 2006, Adams suggested smokers obtain nicotine inhalers to "feed their legal addiction" so nonsmokers won't be endangered.
Also included in Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation's report: Indiana is among 16 states that do not have some form of smoking ban.
Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, chairman of the House Public Health Committee, is expected to push a bill this year that would extinguish smoking in almost all enclosed public places in Indiana, including restaurants, bars, bowling alleys and casinos. Brown has said his statewide smoking ban, a version of which did not pass in 2007, would bring uniformity to Indiana's many differing smoke-free ordinances.