DENVER (AP) – The Mile High City may have lots of physically fit, health-conscious hikers and bikers, but it is way behind cities like New York, Boston and Dallas when it comes to cracking down on smoking.

Earlier this week, the City Council scrapped a proposed ban on smoking in restaurants after the council president, a smoker, said a public hearing would be a waste of time. And the incoming mayor? He is a brew pub owner who favors an unlikely “regional” ban.

Banning smoking is always a tough sell, but in a state where just 15 percent of adults are obese – the lowest rate in the nation – and 14,000-foot peaks beckon from a few miles away, many are wondering why there is even a debate. Even working-class Pueblo has a smoking ban.

“It’s stunning,” City Councilwoman Susan Barnes-Gelt said. “With our reputation of being a progressive city in fitness and health, it’s inconceivable.”

Opponents of a ban say the measure would have sent smokers to the suburbs and is the last thing Denver’s struggling economy needs. The city is facing a $50 million budget deficit and expects to lay off scores of workers.

“There’s a lot of people who are on the edge and we don’t want to push these people over the edge and out of business,” said Cindy Weindling of the Colorado Restaurant Association.

Smoking bans in restaurants and even bars have been approved in about 100 cities and towns across the nation, according to the anti-smoking group Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.

However, the trend seems largely confined to the Northeast and West Coast. Just four states – California, Delaware, New York and Florida – ban smoking in restaurants; Connecticut will join the list in October and Maine in January.

While the presence of the tobacco industry might explain the reluctance to ban smoking in the South, something different may be at work here.

“Western individualism is often a strength in this region,” said Daniel Kemmis, director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana and a former Missoula, Mont., mayor. “I’d be surprised if any interior Western state would pass a statewide smoking ban.”

Health advocates in Washington state have tried unsuccessfully to enact a statewide restaurant smoking ban, while smoking is still allowed in restaurants in Portland, Ore., an outdoorsy city like Denver. Las Cruces, N.M., voters earlier this year rejected a proposal to limit smoking in restaurants. Activists trying to get smoking banned in Colorado Springs restaurants abandoned the effort this week after falling more than 9,000 signatures short of getting the measure on the ballot.

Montana Gov. Judy Martz signed a law in April aimed at overturning a voter-approved smoking ban in Helena’s bars and restaurants after business owners complained they were losing money. A month earlier, researchers had credited the ban with reducing hospital admissions for heart attacks.

Despite its healthy image, Colorado was ranked only 31st for clean indoor air laws by the American Lung Association. The group also gave the state an “F” for its lack of smoke-free workplaces and government buildings; smoking is still permitted in a hallway at the Capitol.

And despite Denver’s healthy lifestyle, nearly a quarter of its residents, about 103,000 people, are smokers, according to the state Health Department. That is near the national average of 23 percent.

No Colorado municipality taxes cigarette sales, and the state imposes only a modest 20-cent-per-pack tax on wholesalers.

The proposal pushed by Smoke-Free Denver would have restricted smoking to cigar bars, private clubs and bars that derive at least 70 percent of their revenue from alcohol.

“It’s a health risk that’s been proven,” Dave Carter, a supporter of the ban, said Tuesday as he ate lunch with his wife and two daughters at the Blue Bonnet Cafe. “It’s not right for people to expose others to risk, however small it is.”

The plan was rejected 7-5 by the City Council on Monday, a week after council President Cathy Reynolds took the unusual step of a canceling a public hearing.

Supporters of the ban point out that Reynolds accepted $6,000 from tobacco interests during her past two campaigns. She also works in a smoke-free building, but smokes anyway because city law allows it in enclosed offices occupied exclusively by smokers.

Mayor-elect John Hickenlooper opposes any smoking ban that does not have a regional reach. And all 10 of the incoming council members say they are reluctant to pass a citywide ban.

“Now we’re going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming to catch up with these cities that we like to compare ourselves with,” smoking-ban proponent Bonnie Mapes said.

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On the Net:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/health/tobacco.htm

Smoke-Free-Denver: http://www.SmokeFreeDenver.org

Center for Rocky Mountain West: http://www.crmw.org

AP-ES-07-03-03 1414EDT

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