Councilwoman Deidre Ledbetter proposed a prohibition on smoking indoors during the New Iberia City Council meeting Tuesday, and was met with mixed support by the council.

Using a sample ordinance provided by the Americans for Nonsmoker’s Rights, Ledbetter said that such ordinances have already been enacted in surrounding areas.

“It’s kind of like a starting point,” Ledbetter said. “In fact, I have several different ordinances that were passed by different cities like East Baton Rouge Parish. It’s a variety that I have and we are going to craft something that is unique for New Iberia, something that’s going to work for us.”

An indoor smoking prohibition isn’t a new idea, according to Ledbetter, but as times and community health issues change, support for an ordinance on indoor smoking increases.

“The person that I succeeded, David Merrill, he brought it forth to the council when he was a council member and that’s when it failed,” Ledbetter said. “He got with me and the regional director for nonsmoking and together they agreed that now is a good time to do this.

“I think that it is because with COVID going around, that’s an additional thing that could help spread COVID. Somebody smoking inside a building, blowing out air. You don’t want somebody sitting next to you, blowing out smoke on you. I think now is a good time to put something in place that’s going to help people from getting lung cancer and spreading covid also.”

Ledbetter’s proposal was met with opposition. Councilman David Broussard said that he does not want to be seen as a dictator and would rather the decision be left to the customers and business owners.

Councilman Dustin Suire said he would prefer the choice to be left to the businesses themselves, adding that drinking a soda could be similarly damaging to your health but nobody would attempt to limit soda consumption in businesses.

Ledbetter said she was undeterred by the opposition, adding that she feels confident that with further discussion, the council may feel differently.

“People have different opinions about things, and I respect everyone’s opinion, but personally I feel health should come before some vice,” Ledbetter said. “People get cancer from secondhand smoke, people die every year from secondhand smoke. They’re not asking for it, but they’re getting it anyway. I think a person’s choice is causing other people some serious problems and also death, and we should look at that aspect. A person that’s dying from secondhand smoke did not make that choice.

“We are definitely going to work together because we are a council and we respect each other. I think we can come to some agreement. Most of the time when we put out an ordinance, a lot of people who are in opposition come to the meeting but since people know about it I think a lot of people will come out in support of it also. They’ll get a good supply of the negative but a good supply of the positive also. Maybe that will also help change their opinions about it.”

Ledbetter also added that as chair of the ordinance committe, she is excited about the work that is being done to update many old ordinances.

“I am chairing the ordinance committee, and that’s not an easy job,” she said. “Our whole group is diverse and we all have different jobs to do. We all represent different people, so it’s a good sounding block to begin with and then we send it over to the council to get more input.

“I’m really enjoying this because some of the ordinances that we’ve done, haven’t been looked at for years and years, thirty plus years, and they are outdated.”