It's a shame state lawmakers couldn't have introduced a bill sooner to ban smoking in South Carolina's restaurants. Maybe they knew introducing a bill in the 11th hour is the equivalent of sending a belated birthday card to your mom: good-intentioned, but missing the mark. The bill, co-signed by outgoing Rep. JoAnne Gilham, R-Hilton Head Island, was filed in early March and has since remained static.

It's not groundbreaking news that involuntary smoking causes disease, including lung cancer, in healthy nonsmokers. And separating smokers and nonsmokers within the same air space may reduce, but does not eliminate, the exposure of nonsmokers to secondhand smoke, according to the Surgeon General.

The Environmental Protection Agency has classified secondhand smoke as a Group A carcinogen, which means there is sufficient evidence that it causes cancer in humans. In fact, secondhand tobacco smoke contains more than 4,000 chemical compounds. More than 60 of these are known or suspected to cause cancer.

But neither is it a mystery that South Carolina is a tobacco state, with deep-pocketed lobbyists whose influence and power reign supreme when it comes to altering the way the tobacco industry does or does not do business.

One need not look further than a snuffed attempt last year to increase the state cigarette tax or the sudden change of heart on the Charleston City Council last year to ban smoking in public indoor places.

Even closer to home, the billion-dollar-a-year tourism business is divided over the issue, with opponents of the ban claiming they'll lose business. New York heard the same argument just before it passed its ban one year ago. But a New York Health Department report March 28 shows not only is the ban good for the lungs, it's good for business.

The report, which compares tax receipts, employment and business openings and closings in 2002 and 2003, shows business in restaurants and bars is up 8.7 percent. The state's Liquor Authority also awarded 1,416 new licenses in 2003 in New York City, compared with 1,361 in 2002, according to the report.

Neither smokers nor Big Tobacco need worry their rights are being stamped out. No one is banning smoking altogether. But by allowing smoking in restaurants to continue, well, that's catering to the smaller percentage of smokers and the deeper pockets of the tobacco industry by ignoring the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.

South Carolinians won't be able to breathe easy until legislators take this issue dead serious.