Well, in the end it will all wind up like California, where in places like the bay area you simply cannot build a new house with anything that burns wood, period. Compare the so-called 'inefficient' OWBs to all the stupid typical fireplaces here in the west. 90% of the firepalces in houses here are completely useless. Or worse than useless; they draw more heat up the flue from inside the house than they contribute to the house. They are grandfathered though, even in the CA bay area. Once a house has been built with a fireplace, it can continue to have one. Some cities here like Eugene have burn limitations on stagnant air days though. Fines are pretty heavy for burning on restricted days.
Several of our neighbors have old style useless fireplaces and they go through tens of cords of wood in winter here. And they smoke a lot more then our OWB does. I know in the midwest and northeast it gets a lot colder, and it is a lot more crowded. So states there are more prone to passing laws against OWBs. However, at the same time, states like NY have completely staged BS photos on their anti-OWB sites, and they are obviously using cases that are not typical and sensational to get their point across. And like anything political, people take things to hysterical levels to make changes happen. Good or bad... for example, children making statements to congress about atrocities in Kuwait that never existed, so we go to war...
Out here where we live there are so few houses and people no one cares. Everyone here burns wood. But the population density is about 3 people per square mile. And we are on the edge of a commercial logging wilderness that is hundreds of square miles in size. Only time we do not burn is during the fire season, when they pay attention to smoke. Even then I field burn with a permit. We also burn slash here, becasue we have to by law. I set a few more piles off the other day before this last storm hit. Up in smoke it all goes... too bad there is not some type of energy storage brick that I can toss into them and store the energy released to heat the house with later.
reminds me, I gott'a go cut some more firewood today. Been a colder than average year here this year, and we are running low. Last two years here I shut the OWB off about now, mid April. We had snow here last week and it is freezing here at night. So we are still using the OWB for heat.