Tuesday night was a bad night for smokers and bar owners in Casper, Wyo. hoping to get the city’s smoking ban loosened up, as the city council declined to take up the matter.

In Nov. 2015, voters approved a ban after a back-and-forth battle over the proposal that ended up going all the way to the Wyoming Supreme Court. Since then, a group of bar owners have said that the ban had reduced their revenue, while other members of the community argued that the ban did nothing to affect behavior and was minimally effective.

Yet none of those were enough to sway the majority of the council, which voted 5-4 against moving forward with an amendment to the ban.

Casper is the state’s second largest city with a population of nearly 55,000 residents.

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Patrick Lagreid

I strive to capture the essence of a cigar and the people behind them in my work – every cigar you light up is the culmination of the work of countless people and often represents generations of struggle and stories. For me, it’s about so much more than the cigar – it’s about the story behind it, the experience of enjoying the work of artisans and the way that a good cigar can bring people together. In addition to my work with halfwheel, I’m the public address announcer for the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks during spring training, as well as for the Salt River Rafters of the Arizona Fall League, the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury and previously the Arizona Rattlers of the Indoor Football League. I also work in a number of roles for MLB.com, plus I'm a voice over artist. Prior to joining halfwheel, I covered the Phoenix and national cigar scene for Examiner.com, and was an editor for Cigar Snob magazine.