INDIANAPOLIS | State lawmakers say they don't plan to separate smokers from their favorite slot machines.

The House added a statewide ban on smoking in most public places, including Lake Michigan casinos, to health care legislation this week. But legislative leaders doubt such a sweeping policy will become law this year, and even the sponsor of the smoking ban says he didn't intend for it to cover casinos.

"It seems that there is a marriage between gambling and smoking," state Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, said this week.

Brown, the General Assembly's most vocal tobacco critic, could not find support earlier this year for an effort to prohibit adults from smoking in cars carrying children. So it was with a healthy dose of skepticism that he and others embraced the broad smoking ban that Republican Rep. Eric Turner, of Gas City, offered Monday as an amendment to Senate Bill 503.

The statewide ban, adopted by a voice vote in the House, would mirror restrictions Valparaiso began enforcing this month.

Smokers still could puff away at bars, tobacco shops and in the hazy comfort of their own homes. But the proposed ban would apply to indoor work places, restaurants, bowling alleys and, for now, riverboat casinos.

"It's certainly not going to be banned on riverboats, which have a lot of bars on them," said House Speaker Pat Bauer, D-South Bend. He predicted the broad ban will be extinguished but said lawmakers might approve a "little dab or two" of public smoking restrictions before adjourning April 29.

"I'd say (the ban) will have a difficult time staying in as a part of that legislation," agreed House Minority Leader Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis.

Bosma added that "banning smoking in cars, for a lot people that seemed to be an intrusion on individuals' personal space," while limiting smoking "where you're around others in a public building, I think that had a little bit more appeal."