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Now that Houston City Council voted in favor of a smoking ban, state Senator Rodney Ellis says the whole state should be next.

“I mean look, there are a lot of things that will kill us that we don’t know about. The least thing we ought to do is no matter how smart or how stupid somebody is, we ought to be doing as much as we can to stop those things that we know cause cancer because cancer causes death," he said.

Talking with the American Cancer Society and checking laws around the country, we found out as of today 11 states are considered smoke-free.

Louisiana and Hawaii have passed smoke free laws that will soon go into effect. And Puerto Rico falls into that category as well.

“So we ought to do it. I am going to be aggressive with this legislation. I think it should have strong bipartisan support. I hope it gets generated in the debate in this election cycle, in the race for governor,” said Sen.  Ellis.

Ellis says tobacco lobbyists will put up a fight.

KHOu-TV

Sen. Rodney Ellis wants to take the smoking ban to the state of Texas.

The fight at city hall came from just two council members, Addie Weisman and Michael Berry.

“If you are terribly concerned about public health then you need to go out to all the restaurants, some of them wonderful, in our city, that serve greasy food that send people to the hospital with heart attacks and you really need to get down to alcohol so let’s be honest, more people die from alcohol than smoking every year,” said Berry.

However, Shelly Sekula-Gibbs said the ban is a win-win; that the only people that will lose out will be the tobacco companies.

“And we’re not in the business of supporting the tobacco industry here at city council,” she said.