An effort to expand the state's Clean Indoor Air Act to include all bars, casinos and private clubs, along with other establishments exempted from the law, could gain traction in the state House this year.

Legislation that would require smokers to extinguish their smokes inside public places is expected to advance to a committee vote in this legislative session.

Rep. Mario Scavello, R-Monroe, said he has been assured by leaders that his bill will receive at least a committee vote this session. If that would happen, that is the fartherest any effort to expand the indoor smoking ban has gotten since the original law was enacted in 2008.

At a Capitol news conference today, Scavello noted that the exemptions included in the 2008 law was a result of compromises with various interest groups.

“There’s room for improvement,” he said. “While one end of the cigarette, cigar and electronic cigarette is suicide, the other is murder. That’s because the effects of secondhand smoke has proven dangerous by all surrounded by it.”

Joining Scavello at the news conference were representatives from the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association, along with a 49-year-old Erie County woman who is afflicted with a number of health problems that are exacerbated by breathing second-hand smoke.

All spoke of the dangers posed to workers in establishments that allow smoking as well as patrons.

“Some businesses remain exempted from the protection of a no-smoking requirement. Today we are here to ask: why some, not all?” said Diane Phillips, senior director of state and federal policy at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. “Everyone deserves the right to breathe clean smoke-free air.”

In Pennsylvania this year, she said there will be 11,000 new cases of lung cancer and more than 7,600 deaths from the disease. She said second-hand smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals and at least 69 are known to cause cancer.

“Closing the loopholes in Pennsylvania’s Clean Air law and making Pennsylvania a smoke-free state will help protect the health of Pennsylvania workers. No one should have to choose between their health and their paycheck,” Phillips said.

Amy Christie, executive director of the Pennsylvania Licensed Establishments Association, which represents 6,000 taverns and other drinking establishments, said her organization would consider supporting an expansion of the indoor smoking ban but only if it truly was a comprehensive ban.

“If this bill eliminates all of the indoor smoking privileges for everybody, that’s something my board will take a look at and they will have to vote on their position,” she said. “But I know that everybody in the casinos and private clubs out there are trying to make exemptions for themselves. We don’t want to be the only ones left in the bill.”

The current law allows for drinking establishments with less than 20 percent food sales to be exempted from the law. Scavello’s bill, as well as a similar one that Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery County, is proposing in the Senate, would eliminate that exemption.

It also would ban smoking inside private clubs, casinos, residential facilities, fundraisers, tobacco promotion events, full-service truck stops, hotel rooms, and tobacco manufacturers, wholesalers or processers. They also want to extend the ban to any outdoor deck, patio, or service area of a food or drinking establishment. And they would allow local municipalities to impose even stricter smoking bans that go beyond what their legislation proposes.

What do you think? We invite your comments on whether the time is right to extend the smoking ban to eliminate the more than 2,800 exemptions provided for in the current law.