SALEM - From Rhode Island to Washington State, legislatures are increasingly stamping out all remaining vestiges of public smoking. Oregon may be getting in on the act soon.

Although the state barred smoking in the workplace in 2001, taverns, bar areas in restaurants, bowling alleys and bingo halls were exempted. Now, Oregon lawmakers say they're ready to end the exemption that tobacco and restaurant lobbyists have fought for years to keep.

And with Democrats now in control of both the House and Senate, backers of the smoking ban believe their chances are better than ever of snuffing out public smoking.

Proponents of the bill say that the current law exposes 35,000 bar and tavern employees to secondhand smoke, which causes premature death and serious diseases in both adults and children, according to a 700-page report on the subject issued by the U.S. Surgeon General last year.

“The EPA classifies secondhand smoke as a group A carcinogen alongside asbestos, arsenic and radon,” said Sen. Ginny Burdick, one of the bill's sponsors. “Secondhand smoke is a serious health problem in our state.”

According to the Portland Democrat, 800 people in Oregon a year die from diseases caused by exposure to secondhand smoke.

But the restaurant industry said a smoking ban would hurt the bar and tavern business.

“What their customers want and what their employees want is a decision that is best left up to the individual establishment,” said Bill Perry, a lobbyist for the Oregon Restaurant Association, a group that opposes the bill.

Advocates say the economic effects are negligible in the growing number of states that have implemented similar legislation.

At The Wild Colonial Tavern in Providence, R.I, a bartender said business has risen since state lawmakers banned smoking in bars and restaurants two years ago.

“A lot of people didn't like coming here, if they were not smokers, because it was so incredibly smoky,” said Tamsen Connor, who has worked at the tavern for three years. Business has increased, Tamsen said, because people don't have to go home “reeking of smoke.”

Claire Hulton, a waitress for 18 years at the Old Town Bar & Grill in New York City, said she had not seen a decline in the number of customers since the city barred smoking in bars and restaurants in 2003. “We haven't suffered at all,” Hulton said.

And Richard Morales, a bartender at the Eastlake Zoo Tavern in Seattle, said he thinks Washington State's ban has increased the bar's customer base. “We have more business,” he said. “I think it's probably increased between 5 and 10 percent.”

The effort to end smoking in Oregon's bars and taverns got a boost in last November's election, when Democrats gained control of the House and retained control of the Senate.

In 2005, a bill that would have extended Oregon's smoking ban to remaining businesses was not even brought up for a vote because sponsors knew it faced defeat in the GOP-controlled House.

According to the American Medical Association, bar and restaurant workers exposed to secondhand smoke are 50 percent more likely to get lung cancer than employees in nonsmoking workplaces.

If Oregon passes the bill, it would join 14 other states that have already banned smoking in all workplaces.

In 2004, Ireland became one of the first countries to prohibit smoking in the workplace, and earlier this month France - a country defined by its cigarette-smoking cafe culture - enacted a ban on lighting up in public.