The state’s top health policy leader said Wednesday that her group plans to ask state legislators again next session for a statewide smoking ban.

Marcia Nielsen – executive director of the state-appointed Kansas Health Policy Authority – said the fact legislators won’t be facing re-election in 2009 may give a ban a better chance of winning approval. A smoking ban proposal this year failed to make it to the floor of the Senate or House for a vote.

“I’ve certainly heard that next year could be a better year for it,” Nielsen said.

But Nielsen – who was in Lawrence on Wednesday to speak at a Lawrence Memorial Hospital leadership retreat – said the fate of a statewide smoking ban likely will be determined in the next few months.

“I think a lot of it depends on the work that stakeholders do this summer and fall to elevate the issue in the minds of legislators,” Nielsen said. “It is one thing for legislators to hear about a ban while they are in Topeka, but if they don’t continue to hear about it all year long, it makes it easier for them to ignore.”

Lawrence in 2004 became the first city in the state to implement a citywide smoking ban in public places and in most indoor places of employment. A group of Lawrence citizens who pushed for the city ban has remained active in lobbying for a statewide ban, but local governments haven’t joined that effort. For example, the City Commission annually delivers a list of legislative priorities to area lawmakers, but support of the proposed statewide ban didn’t make the list. The city-appointed LMH board of trustees also hasn’t taken a position on the statewide ban proposal.

Judy Keller – an LMH board member and an original supporter of the city smoking ban – said what legislators probably need most is time to study data about how smoking bans can improve health.

“When people have the opportunity to really review the data, it is a very compelling case,” Keller said. “It has been shown that the two most important things we can do to improve health in Kansas is to reduce tobacco consumption and fight obesity.”

But smoking ban proposals often have faced opposition from people who say they are an intrusion on individual rights, and from bars and restaurants that say the bans hurt their sales.

“There clearly are legislators who look at this as a local control issue,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen, though, said her group – appointed by the governor and the Legislature to recommend health policy – likely wouldn’t significantly change its proposal to legislators next year. In addition to the smoking ban, the Health Policy Authority also proposed a 50-cent increase in the state’s cigarette tax to fund health initiatives. That proposal received little traction in the Legislature.

“It is incumbent on us to keep the drumbeat up,” Nielsen said. “If you think you are going to get everything you want in a single legislative session, you haven’t been around a session. My idea is to bring back a plan that is shockingly similar to what we just proposed.”