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Belmont lights up nation’s strictest smoking ban
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BELMONT (Map, News) - Belmont’s landmark ordinance regulating secondhand smoke inside most apartments, considered the toughest in the United States, goes into effect Friday, though some smokers will have a temporary reprieve, according to city officials.
The Belmont City Council approved the ordinance, declaring secondhand smoke a public nuisance and extending the city’s ban on smoking to include multi-unit, multistory residences, in a 3-2 vote Oct. 9. Landlords will now be required to put no-smoking clauses into any new or renewed leases.
However, the ban for multi-unit apartment buildings will not take effect for an additional 14 months, until Jan. 9, 2009, so that one-year lease agreements will be unaffected. If tenants leave before that time, those units will become nonsmoking.
“No other city or jurisdiction in the country has required that all multilevel, multi-unit housing be nonsmoking,” said Serena Chen, policy director for the American Lung Association of East Bay. This provision “puts them over the top,” she said.
Though Belmont and some other California cities already restrict smoking in multi-unit common areas, Belmont is the first city to extend secondhand smoke regulation to the inside of individual apartment units. Smoking will now be permitted only in designated outdoor areas of multi-unit housing.
The city has also prohibited smoking in indoor and outdoor workplaces, parks, stadiums, sports fields, trails and outdoor shopping areas.
Smoking is still allowed in single-family homes and their yards, and units and yards in apartment buildings, condominiums and townhouses that do not share any common floors or ceilings with other units.
Smoking on city streets and sidewalks is also permitted, except in the location of city-sponsored events or within 20 feet of prohibited outdoor areas. Smoking in cars is also allowed.
The smoking prohibition does not apply to smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes, as long as it complies with state law, according to the language of the ordinance.
City officials have said that enforcement of the smoking ban will be complaint-driven, and that residents should first attempt to resolve any disputes on their own, before the city becomes involved.
First-time violators could be subject to a $100 fine.
Chen said she has also been advising city officials on community outreach plans for informational meetings on the ordinance, and on programs in the area to help smokers quit.
The issue was first brought to the attention of the Belmont City Council in July 2006, when residents at a senior housing complex complained of complications arising from secondhand smoke in their apartments.
— Bay City News
Comments from Examiner Readers
1:08 PM MST on Thu., May. 15, 2008 re: "Belmont aims to outlaw smoking"
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10:00 AM MST on Wed., Sep. 12, 2007
re: "examiNation SF: How do you feel about a city making it illegal to smoke in your own home?"
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9:50 AM MST on Wed., Sep. 12, 2007
re: "examiNation SF: How do you feel about a city making it illegal to smoke in your own home?"
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9:45 AM MST on Wed., Sep. 12, 2007
re: "examiNation SF: How do you feel about a city making it illegal to smoke in your own home?"
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Dutch Girl said:
I do not get this. Banning smoking outdoors. Outdoors smoke is a lot less damaging then indoors where the smoke stays put. Basically you are telling parents that smoke: He its okay to smoke in front of your kids. Just do not do it outside, where your kids won't be affected by the smoking. Furthermore you are making it an elite problem. Only the richer people who can afford a detached house are allowed to smoke. Something that is an elite problem tends to become a more popular thing to do, mostly for teens. Also what happened to the land of the free. You should at least have a choice whether or not you want to do something that is damaging for yourself. And then there was this little investigation that concluded that you would have to have smoke 40 Packyears just to get a 3 times higher chance of lungcancer. I smoke and I know it is bad for me. But since I knew that and I still started smoking, it is my problem. Not that of any government. And I will not smoke around you if you ask me
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Landlord said:
We are not children and the government is not our parent. As a landlord, I have the right to make my buildings non-smoking if I choose to and to evict tenants who do not comply. On the other hand, if I choose to offer rentals in a smoker-friendly building, then tenants may choose to live there or not, based upon their own preference. For those who are not familiar with this process, it is called freedom.
98 agree | 95 disagree
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Examiner reader said:
It's one thing to ban smoking in public places, including bars, based on protecting employees by not exposing them against their will to second-hand smoke. That falls under OSHA requirements. But a city does not have the right to tell people that they cannot smoke in their own home based on the idea that it may seep through the walls or floors and annoy someone in a neighboring home. Believe me, I am a non-smoker and I hate being around it, but this is ridiculous. Where will it stop? Will expressing ideas become illegal if the ideas are annoying?
92 agree | 86 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Anything that can cause bodily harm...damaging the lungs, shorten lifespan, cause cancer....kill slowly should be banned.
133 agree | 92 disagree
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