Outdoor Smoking Bans

Smoking is Prohibited Everywhere in the City

While it may sound extreme, this is the text from an actual smoking ordinance enacted by the city of Calabasas, in California. This ordinance, adopted in February 2006, banned smoking everywhere in the city except on private residential property. The smoking ban includes all streets, sidewalks, parking lots, park, and all other outdoor locations.

There are only two exceptions to the outdoor smoking ban:

1. If no other person is within 25 feet of a smoker, or if the smoker gets permission from all other people within 25 feet; and

2. At the Calabasas Commons outdoor shopping mall.

While the scientific evidence demonstrates that smoking indoors or in outdoor areas where nonsmokers cannot move around freely poses a substantial public health risk, this type of widespread outdoor smoking ban leaves the realm of science-based public health advocacy and enters the realm of being a crusade against smokers.

What makes the policy all the more problematic is its hypocrisy. The Calabasas City Council is so hypocritical that it is banning smoking on streets and sidewalks in the name of addressing the terrible problem of smoke drifting along outdoors and exposing a nonsmoker transiently, yet it is specifically allowing smoking at a place where hundreds of its residents congregate: The Calabasas Commons shopping mall!!!

The Calabasas City Council apparently thinks secondhand smoke is so bad that it cannot allow smokers to walk down the street with a cigarette and it is apparently so concerned about kids seeing people setting a bad example by smoking in public that it will not even allow a smoker to light up in a parking lot. However, secondhand smoke is not so bad that people cannot light up at a crowded mall, nor is it such a bad example that the City would want to disallow smoking at its premiere retail establishment.

The policy makers in Calabasas are putting on a great show with all their talk about the hazards of secondhand smoke and they're willing to infringe upon smokers in places where exposure to this hazard is low and quite transient. But when it really comes down to it, they don't want to take any risk that the city could lose money if fewer people shop at the Mall. After all, health is really important, but not when it threatens to compete with the city's financial health.

A New Trend in Tobacco Control

Calabasas is not just an isolated exception. More and more, communities, college campuses, and other entities are reaching beyond the science and banning smoking everywhere, not in order to protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke exposure, but to protect nonsmokers from ever having to see a smoker. Smoking is being treated as a moral affront, not merely as a health hazard.

The sad part of the story is that many anti-smoking groups are supporting these efforts. No U.S. anti-smoking group has yet spoken out against these policies. In fact, Action on Smoking and Health, a leading U.S. anti-smoking group, and a number of other anti-smoking groups actually supported the Calabasas smoking ordinance.

More Examples

Here are more examples of actual or proposed outdoor smoking bans that go beyond the science, beyond the need to protect nonsmokers from substantial tobacco smoke exposure, and enter the realm of treating smoking as a moral affront, rather than treating tobacco smoke as a health hazard to nonsmokers:

Communities

Burbank (California)

Belmont (California)

Berkeley (California)

Des Moines (Iowa)

College Campuses

North Dakota State College of Science

Oregon Health & Sciences University

Minnesota State University - Moorhead

University of Minnesota Duluth

Jamestown College

Fullerton College