One Central Texas city wants to tighten up its smoking restrictions.
"I started smoking when I was in high school. Everybody smoked. My parents smoked, all their friends, everybody smoked, including my friends in high school. We didn't know any better," Joan Hinshaw, a Nolanville city Councilmember said.
Hinshaw smoked for 30 years before quitting.
"I wish I'd known then what I know now," Hinshaw said.
That's why Hinshaw is fighting to revise the current smoking ordinance for Nolanville along with the rest of the city council.
The revisions of the smoking ordinance are: To ban smoking in public areas, require a separate ventilation system for smoking sections in restaurants and make it illegal to smoke in a car where minors are present.
"Smoking in a car, you're really concentrating smoke in a very small area and children don't have the power to tell you to quit smoking," Hinshaw said.
"As a child, I asked my dad to stop and it never happened. He always told me he'd stop whenever he wanted to," Lynn Bilberry, another city Councilmember, said.
But not everyone supports the changes to the law.
"The way I see it, as long as you're not bothering anybody and you know, somebody hasn't said like 'hey I have asthma or I'm allergic to cigarette smoke,' what I do in public, they shouldn't be able to control that," Jeremy Bankirk said.
The new smoking policies will include all forms of tobacco, even E-cigs.
"We have a lot of people who drive through our town on I-14 and 439, and we're not looking to make millions of dollars off of this each year," Bilberry said.
There will be a probationary period before citations are written after the law goes into effect.
"We're gonna give people time to get used to the law, and if Nolanville becomes known as a place where you can get ticketed for smoking with children in your car, great," Hinshaw said.
There is a public hearing about the smoking ordinance is on July 19.
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