Despite support from the town’s mayor, Chamber of Commerce, other business organizations, an antismoking group and more, the five-person Board of Alderman rejected a proposed law that would have banned smoking in commercial buildings in Philadelphia, Miss.
The ban was defeated 3-2, despite an invested effort from the mayor to see its passing.
One of the alderman opposed to the measure, Josh Gamblin, told The Neshoba Democrat, “”If you don’t want someone smoking in your building, you say, no smoking in my business.”
Despite the defeat, Beverly Knox of the Mississippi Tobacco-Free Coalition, who pushed for the ban, said she would seek to have the measure revisited in the future.
Philadelphia is located in central Mississippi, 80 miles northeast of Jackson. It has a population less than 10,000. It is most famous for the murder of three civil rights workers during the summer of 1964.
(Featured image via TownMapsUSA, licensed under Creative Commons Attributions-Share Alike 3.0)