Elkhart passes smoking ban; is county-wide ban next?

by Sarah Rice (srice@wsbt.com)

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The city of Elkhart passed a smoking ban

The Elkhart City Council passed a smoking ban on April 3, 2008. (WSBT photo)

By Beth Boehne

Story Created: Apr 4, 2008 at 4:50 PM EST

Story Updated: Apr 9, 2008 at 5:32 PM EST

ELKHART — Lighting up in Elkhart will soon be a thing of the past. The City Council passed a smoking ordinance Thursday. It bans smoking in any enclosed public places, like restaurants and some businesses. Goshen passed a similar ban last April. Many wonder if a county-wide ban is next.

Nappanee would also have to pass its own ban before the county would consider it. That’s a promise one county commissioner made to proponents. But a smoking ban in Nappanee is not likely to happen anytime soon.

“It’s my choice if I want to smoke or not,” smoker Noel Johnson told WSBT News.

But that choice is quickly being taken away as many businesses are going smoke free.

Elkhart County Commissioner Mike Yoder thinks it’s a trend we’ll continue to see.

“I think that there’s a strong sense that the market is going to take us there anyways,” he said. “There’s no need for a county ordinance.”

But Yoder says he would consider it under one circumstance.

“Now what I’ve promised the proponents is that if Nappanee would go as well — if we had the three largest ones go — then I would bring it to the county commissioners,” he said.

But a smoking ban is not something Nappanee is considering right now.

“We took this little poll with the chamber about a year ago when Goshen was working on theirs and Elkhart wasn’t quite sure what to do at that time, and there didn’t seem to be a large enough group of people here who wanted to ban or move that way,” explained Nappanee Mayor Larry Thompson.

It’s a decision Yoder isn’t too worried about.

In fact, he’d rather not have government intrude on private businesses unless it’s absolutely necessary.

“It’s really tough for us to step across that line into a private business and tell them, ‘No you can’t do this activity that the federal says is legal,’” he said. “So that’s a big philosophical problem that we have.”

Nappanee Mayor Thompson says a smoking ban isn’t necessarily out of the question. He says if the county approached him about it, he would consider it. But at this point, it’s not something they’re looking to do on their own.

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