Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, joined by the the Virginians for a Health Future Coalition and other community leaders held a rally at Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea in Roanoke.

Standing in one of Roanoke's first nonsmoking hangouts, state Sen. Brandon Bell started work Wednesday to pass a bill to ban smoking in restaurants, bowling alleys and other indoor public areas.

Before a crowd of about 30 in downtown Roanoke's Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea, which has not allowed smoking since it opened in 1990, Bell announced he'd carry the controversial legislation during next year's General Assembly session.

"When you really look at the health aspects, that's what really got me," Bell said. "It's not an inconvenience. It's not just, 'I don't like smoking.' It's the health component to it that really drove me across the line. ... I would say that now is the time for a smoke-free Virginia."

Bell said his staff still was hashing over the specifics of next year's bill but that it will likely be similar to the one he carried last year. Bell also allowed that it could change drastically over the course of the legislative session, as happened with last year's bill.

That legislation was intended as an extension of 1990's Clean Indoor Air Act, which required restaurants of a certain size to provide a nonsmoking section. With some last-minute changes to gain support among four state senators, Bell guided it to an unlikely passage in the Senate after it was initially killed. The changes made on the floor removed a local option to make the ban on smoking in restaurants statewide.

The bill eventually was killed by unanimous vote in a House of Delegates subcommittee. Bell's initial success, however, received attention from national and international media.

Bell hopes to build on that momentum as he prepares for next year. Wednesday's announcement in Roanoke marked the final stop on a three-day tour that started Monday and hit Newport News, Richmond, Arlington, Fredericksburg and Charlottesville. The tour is the first step in a campaign to generate public support for the bill.

The Roanoke announcement carried the tone of a political rally, as supporters wore stickers and carried yard signs that read "I want a Smoke Free Virginia."

Representatives from the American Heart Association, the Virginia Academy of Family Physicians and the Roanoke Chapter of the Sierra Club all expressed support for the bill.

Bell said he first began to consider the legislation after visiting a smoke-free restaurant in Florida, which had just enacted similar laws. His wife, Debbie, suggested that Virginia could do the same, but Bell was initially skeptical, largely because of the state's powerful tobacco lobby.

"I said, 'We've got Phillip Morris, and we've got Phillip Morris, and we've got Phillip Morris, and we've got a lot of people that grow tobacco,' " Bell said. "Even the Capitol that is now being renovated in Richmond has tobacco leaves in the ceiling that are laced in gold, showing the economic background of our state. This will be a very tough measure to move forward.

"So I went through all this litany of reasons why it would be tough for Virginia, and she said, 'OK, why can't we do it?' " Bell said.

The legislation was at that point sponsored by then-Sen. Bill Mims, R-Leesburg. Mims left the Senate in late 2005 to take a job as new Attorney General Bob McDonnell's chief lawyer, and Bell took his seat on the Senate Committee on Education and Health, as well as the anti-smoking bill.

Although the subcommittee that killed the bill last year hasn't changed, Bell said he thinks people are learning more about the dangers of secondhand smoke.

A public push for the bill, he said, may change the minds of legislators facing voters next November, when all 140 members of the General Assembly will be up for re-election.

"You're always in tune with your constituents, but even more so this year. House members and Senate members who might not have voted before may take measure of their constituents to see what they think about it," Bell said. "And I think they'll find they're very favorable. I think more than 50 percent of their constituents will be in favor of this."