City leaders will decide the fate of smoky barrooms in Cambridge this month.

Cambridge’s nine city councillors will likely vote this month on an ordinance banning smoking in all restaurants and bars, legislation which has been hotly debated in public hearings since last spring.

The ban would go into effect in May 2003. Currently, four councillors have expressed their support, leaving the ordinance one vote shy of passing.

Today, the councillors will meet once again with the commissioner of public health to try for a compromise.

But with strong lobbies on either side—and competing economic and health concerns—vying for the councillors votes, middle ground might be hard to find.

Advocates of the ban, supported by local restaurant workers’ unions, say that the ban is a necessary measure to control a health risk and to make sure waiters and bartenders have safe working environments. They argue that the dangers of second-hand smoke could be lethal to the wait staff.

“To me it’s a public health issue, plain and simple,” says Councillor Henrietta Davis.

But the ban’s opponents say that the prohibition would primarily hurt Cambridge’s small businesses, which could lose their customers to bars in neighboring communities that have no smoking restrictions on the books.

The decision comes down to the nine councillors.

Four councillors have expressed active support of the ban. Three are expected to vote against the ban. And two are as yet undecided—Councillors Anthony D. Galluccio and E. Denise Simmons say that they support the intent of the ban, but not the ordinance as it stands.

Unless a compromise is worked out between a wide variety of divergent interests, the ban as it stands now may go up in smoke.

A Growing Movement

Several opponents of the ban have said they would not support a smoking prohibition for Cambridge restaurants unless it were applied across the Commonwealth.

But a statewide smoking ban is unlikely in the near term, because Gov. W. Mitt Romney and other state leaders have yet to express support for such legislation.

Nevertheless, the smoking ban movement has started to spread, city by city, throughout Massachusetts and the nation.