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Belmont to take final vote on smoking ban tonight
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Belmont residents may have to stub out their cigs and move to another town if they don't want to be cited as a public nuisance. The city is scheduled to take a final vote tonight on an ordinance that would make it illegal to smoke not only in public areas, but inside of private apartments that share floors or ceilings with other units.
BELMONT (Map, News) - Belmont residents could wake up tomorrow to the promise — or curse, depending on how you look at it — of an essentially smoke-free city. A landmark ordinance regulating secondhand smoke in the city will go into effect in 30 days if adopted on a second reading at tonight's Belmont City Council meeting.
The ordinance, introduced by the City Council on Sept. 11 and then approved with a few wording changes at its Sept. 25 meeting, would declare secondhand smoke a public nuisance and would extend the city's current smoking ban to include multi-unit, multi-story residences.
Though Belmont and some other California cities already restrict smoking in multi-unit common areas, Belmont would be the first city to extend secondhand smoke regulation to the inside of individual apartment units.
Smoking would still be 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.
The ban for multi-unit apartment buildings would not take effect for an additional 14 months after the ordinance takes effect, so that one-year lease agreements would be unaffected.
Smoking would be permitted only in designated outdoor areas of multi-unit housing. Additionally, smoking would not be allowed in indoor and outdoor workplaces, or in parks, stadiums, sports fields, trails and outdoor shopping areas.
Smoking on city streets and sidewalks would be permitted under the proposed ordinance, except in the location of city-sponsored events or in close proximity to prohibited areas.
City officials have said that enforcement of the smoking ban will be complaint-driven.
The issue was first brought to the attention of the Belmont City Council last July, when residents at a senior housing complex complained of complications arising from secondhand smoke in their apartments.
— Examiner staff and Bay City News contributed to this report
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?
93 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.
134 agree | 92 disagree
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