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)

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Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.