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RALEIGH (AP) — A proposed law that would have banned smoking in all workplaces, including bars and restaurants, was watered down and tentatively approved in the House on Wednesday.

The modification to the bill came after lawmakers in the country's top tobacco-growing state recalled the wealth the crop delivered for decades.

A final House vote is scheduled on Thursday, when it can be changed again. If approved, the bill would move to the Senate, where further twists are likely.

"Folks, tobacco made this state," said Rep. Nelson Cole, D-Rockingham. "Although it's decreasing, we don't need to be kicking them in the teeth to the extent that we will with this."

Lawmakers voted 75-42 on Wednesday after Cole succeeded in selling an amendment that bars smoking in businesses that employ or serve anyone under age 18, but not other businesses. Smoking-friendly bars and restaurants would have to post that fact at every entrance.

Supporters said the change negated efforts to protect waiters and other workers from inhaling secondhand smoke. The original measure would have forbidden smoking at nearly any business.

"It does nothing for the people who work in these jobs," said House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman, D-Davidson, the bill's primary proponent.

Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland, compared bar and restaurant workers toiling as they breathed an identified carcinogen with coal miners who knew keeping their jobs could result in black lung disease.

"They had no choice in their jobs because those were the jobs that existed in their community," Glazier said. "Secondhand smoke injures and it kills and the debate on the health effects is over."

Bill opponents argued workers can choose whether to work where there is smoke, and government had no right to make the choice for business owners.

"Tobacco has been a backbone of our state and now tobacco may be a killer," said Rep. Leo Daughtry, R-Johnston. "We are becoming a nanny state for sure."

If North Carolina's smoking ban is approved this year, the state would become the 35th with some regulation on smoking in restaurants and bars.

Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee exempt restaurants and bars that don't admit people under the age of 18 or 21