Smokers, meet your new favorite hangout: Bellaire

Houston smokers, it looks like you'll have a new favorite hangout when the city's smoking ban takes effect in September: Last night, the Bellaire City Council voted down a similar ban in their city.

Bellaire Mayor Cindy Siegel, who cast one of two votes in favor of the ban, backed up her position with statistics about the harmful effects of secondhand smoke — the same tactic Houston City Council used. "A person's decision to smoke impacts my heath and my family's health," Siegel said. "It is the same concept as regulating refrigerator temperatures in restaurants so that food is at a safe temperature." That reasoning didn't fly with Councilwoman Peggy Faulk, one of five council members who voted against the ban: "If people don't like the smoke, they can vote with their pocketbooks," she said. We can't help but wonder whether the Bellaire council's vote wasn't influenced just a little by the idea that Bellaire — a city surrounded by soon-to-be-non-smoking Houston — could really cash in by allowing smoking in restaurants and bars. We can almost envision the plume of cigarette smoke rising to our southwest now.

Siegel said the National Restaurant Association had asked the Bellaire council to consider a ban so there would be a unified smoking policy in the Houston area. Local cities on the ban bandwagon include Baytown, where voters approved a smoking ban in November, and League City, where a ban awaits a final vote next week. In Galveston, the city council voted to reject a ban last year.