Is Calabasas Right to Ban Outdoor Smoking?

[Jelfish]

http://www.theacorn.com/news/2006/0209/Front_page/001.html

The new Calabasas secondhand smoke ordinance, which would prohibit smoking in all public areas of the city including parks, sidewalks and outdoor businesses, will take effect by the middle of March, city officials said.

Final passage of the ordinance is expected at the city council’s Feb. 15 meeting.

At its Feb. 1 meeting the council outlined certain exceptions to the law.

Officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Health, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, Healthier Solutions, Inc., Smoke-Free Air for Everyone and the Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Los Angeles expressed strong support for the new law. Of the 17 public speakers at the meeting, all but one supported the ordinance.

Last month, California became the first state to declare second-hand tobacco smoke a toxic air pollutant.

“. . .The California Air Resources Board, which is the agency which regulates air quality in California, has adopted a regulation to treat secondhand smoke as a toxic pollutant of the air, like the kinds of things that come out of petroleum smoke stacks and out of the tailpipes of cars,” said Michael Colantuono, Calabasas city attorney. “That decision is the first time a state regulatory agency of any state in the nation has reached that conclusion.

The city council agreed to allow smoking in the following areas:

•Private residential property, other than housing used as a childcare or health care facility when employees, children or patients are present

•Up to 20 percent of guest rooms in any hotel or motel

•Designated smoking “outposts” in shopping mall common areas that are at least five feet away from any doorway or opening that leads to an enclosed area.

“I think the reason that (city) staff recommended a relatively small number (of outposts) in this instance is because (the city is) going to be dealing with a variety of commercial property: some large, some small, some that are big rectangles, some that have odder shapes,” Colantuono said. “We wanted to have the ability to have at least one designated space on each commercial property that meets the requirements. The feeling was that if you don’t provide an outlet, then people would simply defy the ordinance.”

The city said it would relax the ban at times when non-smokers aren’t present in a public area.

Business owners will be responsible for ensuring that all employees and patrons comply with the new law.

Individual citizens can report offenders to the city and officials will determine how to handle fines on a case-by-case basis, said Tony Coroalles, Calabasas city manager.

To view the second-hand smoke ordinance, visit www.cityofcalabasas.com.

Sure, breathing in smoke isn't pleasant, but I think this is going too far. Thoughts?

 

[loseyourname]

Well, I'm allergic to cigarette smoke and can have bad asthmatic responses at times, and always at least experience throat irritation whenever I walk by someone smoking, so I'm all for it. I don't see any reason why some person who is stupid enough to inhale tar fumes as a recreational habit should be allowed to put my health at risk as well.

As an analogy, how would any of you like it if I flashed a bright flashlight into your eyes or blew an airhorn into your ear as you walked past me? The irritation to my senses of taste and smell is just as bad with cigarette smoke as the irritation to sight and hearing from doing those two things.

 

[Pengwuino]

Perfume is pretty irritating to my senses. Let's ban that too?

 

[mattmns]

Yeah, perfume can be irritating too, but I am not sure if it will have the same affect as smoking on your lungs. Also, when I am walking around campus I have not noticed a person with strong perfume, so strong that I was annoyed, as opposed to smokers whom are walking around campus all the time, and are irritating.

 

[loseyourname]

Perfume is pretty irritating to my senses. Let's ban that too?

Well, there are things that are reasonable and things that are not. Pollen does me in the worst, and we obviously can't just ban grass. I honestly don't see much harm in making smokers use a designated smoking area, though.

Then again, after having a girlfriend a while back that couldn't hold off smoking her precious cigarettes until after we were out of the car, even though she knew the smoke irritated me greatly, has given me a very low opinion of chemical addicts in general. I'm not at all sympathetic to them. Anything that makes it harder for them I'm pretty much always going to be in favor of. Don't consider me unbiased.

 

[loseyourname]

Yeah, perfume can be irritating too, but I am not sure if it will have the same affect as smoking on your lungs. Also, when I am walking around campus I have not noticed a person with strong perfume, so strong that I was annoyed, as opposed to smokers whom are walking around campus all the time, and are irritating.

Also, if some fool is going to spray perfume at you as you walk past, that should be banned.

 

[zoobyshoe]

... has given me a very low opinion of chemical addicts in general. I'm not at all sympathetic to them. Anything that makes it harder for them I'm pretty much always going to be in favor of. Don't consider me unbiased.

As a heavy smoker, myself, I feel better hearing you extend it to all forms of addiction.

The blanket strategy of making it harder for smokers is extremely psychologically counter productive, and I've found my way around it many, many times, simply because it makes me feel singled out and picked on: people will say amazingly hostile things to someone smoking in public that they won't say to someone who'se buzzed on wine at a party. It's become generally accepted that it's OK to beat up cigarette smokers, but you'd be considered weird if you did the same to someone who went home every night and had three beers.

Prohibition didn't work and ended up getting repealed. The public consciousness has shifted away from that as a result and slowly focused on smokers, who, are much easier targets. There's a more or less sane faction of ani-smokers who are level-headed and nice about any objections they raise if you light up, but there is a much more vocal , noisy batch who are really out to beat smokers up: vent the general frustration of their lives on them, because they've become an acceptable target.

 

[loseyourname]

Perfume is pretty irritating to my senses. Let's ban that too?

I should also mention that when I say cigarette smoke irritates me, I don't mean I'm annoyed by it. I mean that it makes me phlegm up, makes me cough and sneeze, makes my eyes water, and causes my throat to swell a bit and close up, making it harder to swallow and sometimes harder to breathe.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well, there are things that are reasonable and things that are not. Pollen does me in the worst, and we obviously can't just ban grass. I honestly don't see much harm in making smokers use a designated smoking area, though.

You could get grass banned. You'd have to get a bunch of studies that come to the conclusion that grass pollen is really affecting all of us to some extent lowering the general level of health, overworking the immune system, making us all more susceptible to various infections. Work on that vigorously for a few years and I have no doubt you'll spread the meme that it's mean to allergic people to grow a lawn.

Next you can go after cat owners.

 

[Evo]

Sorry, people do NOT need to smoke. I see no reason that they should be allowed to smoke in the presence of others. If people that smoke can't go without smoking for more than a couple of hours, they need to seek help or stay home.

Sorry zoob, but NO ONE should impose habits that are unhealthy to others in a public space. What a person does in his own house is up to him, but in a public space, nothing should be done that can inflict physical discomfort or harm to another.

Someone that is drunk at a wine party isn't preventing me from breathing. That's the difference. I think I have the right to breathe.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I agree Zooby. This is just more of the same; heavy handed mob rule promoted and condoned by people who don't understand the concept of liberty.

Wait until the inescapable logic of banning alcohol catches up again.

We certainly need to ban all cars; and esp SUVs.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

When the smog related health statistics came out one day some years ago, I investigated the idea of suing the city of LA for poor air quality.

Wish I was rich enough to do something like this...

 

[zoobyshoe]

Sorry, people do NOT need to smoke. I see no reason that they should be allowed to smoke in the presence of others. If people that smoke can't go without smoking for more than a couple of hours, they need to seek help or stay home.

Sorry zoob, but NO ONE should impose habits that are unhealthy to others in a public space. What a person does in his own house is up to him, but in a public space, nothing should be done that can inflict physical discomfort or harm to another.

Someone that is drunk at a wine party isn't preventing me from breathing. That's the difference. I think I have the right to breathe.

You're missing the point about this being the fad crime. If you examine the situation with any logic you'll see that the wine drinker is potentially as dangerous, if not more, than the smoker, when they drive home, or do something careless the next day at work cause they're fuzzy from drinking. Depending on how I define "physical discomfort or harm" I could have you banned from any public place where someone with an allergy to deodorant or your air freshener might be or someone allergic to any pet dander you might have on you. Smokers are the easy target nowadays and most people have jumped on the bandwagon. 80 years ago you could smoke cigar after cigar at home, but take a nip of whisky and your wife would club you with a frying pan.

 

[loseyourname]

You could get grass banned.

Grass grows naturally. You can't ban it because you can't get rid of it everywhere that it is. Plus, it's pretty damn useful in keeping topsoil around and feeding the cattle and all that.

Next you can go after cat owners.

I would love to rid the world of cats for many different reasons. However, you have to know that isn't analagous. Cat owners don't spray dander into the air in public places outside of their own homes. Just as I avoid the homes of smokers, I could easily avoid the homes of cat owners if I wished to. I'm not allergic to cat dander, though, and even though cats annoy me, they usually leave me alone.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I agree Zooby. This is just more of the same; heavy handed mob rule promoted and condoned by people who don't understand the concept of liberty.

Wait until the inescapable logic of banning alcohol catches up again.

We certainly need to ban all cars; and esp SUVs.

I don't actually object to not being allowed to smoke inside in public places in principle. These outdoor bans are going too far. Most people have some kind of habit or thing they like to do that isn't good for them and others around. If we spin it right, and it wouldn't be hard, we can make anyone who eats at fast food restaurants look quite irresponsible and reckless, and we could get fries outlawed. Then we could go after coffee drinkers. Caffein is essentially a toxin, isn't it?

Non-smokers have already won huge victories and I think they should be satisfied and lay off.

 

[mattmns]

Wait, maybe I am missing the logic here. How is someone eating fries harming me?

 

[loseyourname]

I don't actually object to not being allowed to smoke inside in public places in principle. These outdoor bans are going too far.

Banning smoking in an entire city is probably going too far, but the outdoor bans make sense in the two places I've actually seen them already instituted - at theme parks and within 20 feet of entrances and exits that are used by the general public. In those cases, if smoking is allowed in those places, it is inevitable that people who do not want to breathe in smoke, and might be adversely affected by doing so, will be forced to do so at some point.

The only place I've seen smoking banned everywhere, meaning there weren't even designated smoking areas, was in Camp Snoopy, the part of Knott's Berry Farm that is frequented mostly by children. Again, I think this is reasonable, and it would be pretty rotten of anybody to smoke around children in general. Actually, now that I think about it, smoking is banned at schools as well, another place populated by minors.

The only reason I don't have a problem with drinking alcohol is that it isn't dangerous in moderation. In fact, it can be a healthy thing to do in moderation. Getting absolutely wasted, on the other hand, is banned in public. Public drunkeness has been a crime for as long as I've been alive, and I would imagine much longer. The thing about cigarettes is that even just one, or even just part of one, can have very bad effects. Hell, I'll never forget the anti-smoking group that came into my school when I was in third grade, and used a little robot that inhaled smoke into a plastic lung. The lung turned completely black with tar after a single puff. That image will forever be ingrained into my mind and it impressed into me how completely disgusting and pointless a habit this is. There are plenty of ways to deprive one's brain of oxygen. Why cigarettes?

 

[loseyourname]

Wait, maybe I am missing the logic here. How is someone eating fries harming me?

It's not. What he is doing is using the slippery-slope argument, which abstractly says that A might be a rational, even good thing to do, but the next step might be B, which is not so rational and might be a bad thing.

It's recognized as an informal logical fallacy, but an addict will not always be logical in defending his addiction (sorry, zoob, I like you but I warned you that I feel pretty strongly about this and am probably not entirely reasonable myself).

 

[Jelfish]

I would disagree that drinking does no harm to others. There are many cases where alcohol leads to beligerant behavior, and worse, drunk driving. However, drinking is much more social and therefore evades what zooby called the 'fad' criminalization.

Of course, the issue here isn't what smoking does to your own body. After all, many things, like standing near a speaker at a rock concert or eating at McDonalds, are unhealthful things that we generally have the freedom to do because we are free to make decisions that affect our health. The issue here is how smoking affects others.

Although I'm definitely not a fan of inhaling smoke, I feel like this law is legislating courtesy. If I were a smoker and smoked alone in a public park and then a non-smoker decided to walk by, I would not think it fair if I had to put out the cigarette for fear that the person would inhale some of my smoke. Isn't it just as reasonable to expect a person to not walk into a smoke filled area? On the other hand, I would consider it common courtesey to not light up next to a bunch of people who were comfortable being in a smoke-free environment. Isn't that enough?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Grass grows naturally. You can't ban it because you can't get rid of it everywhere that it is. Plus, it's pretty damn useful in keeping topsoil around and feeding the cattle and all that.

My point is, you could get the notion started that having a lawn is a bad thing. If you worked at it till you succeeded, you'd have people getting angry when they walked by homes with lawns the same way some people get angry at smokers today when they didn't 40 years ago.

I would love to rid the world of cats for many different reasons. However, you have to know that isn't analagous. Cat owners don't spray dander into the air in public places outside of their own homes. Just as I avoid the homes of smokers, I could easily avoid the homes of cat owners if I wished to. I'm not allergic to cat dander, though, and even though cats annoy me, they usually leave me alone.

For whatever reason you would like to get rid of cats, though, you don't press the issue cause it's not the fad crime to own a cat: you would be all alone. If you go after smokers, there'll be lots of support. Go after drinkers: eh, some pro, some con: much more ambiguous. Pot smokers? That one usually starts a big fight with strong opinions on both sides. Cigarette smokers are pretty much evil, though, nowadays. That's the fad opinion.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Wait, maybe I am missing the logic here. How is someone eating fries harming me?

Their resultant health problems raise your medical insurance rates.

 

[mattmns]

Of course he would be all alone, I don't know many people who are allergic to cats. However, I do know quite a few people, myself included, who do not like to inhale second hand smoke.

Their resultant health problems raise your medical insurance rates.

And that is harming my body by?... Causing me to work more, and therefore injuring my back or something?...

 

[zoobyshoe]

It's not. What he is doing is using the slippery-slope argument, which abstractly says that A might be a rational, even good thing to do, but the next step might be B, which is not so rational and might be a bad thing.

It's recognized as an informal logical fallacy, but an addict will not always be logical in defending his addiction (sorry, zoob, I like you but I warned you that I feel pretty strongly about this and am probably not entirely reasonable myself).

I am slippery sloping because my observation is that that's the dynamic already in play against smokers. If it gets to the point where it is made illegal, all the "anti" people are going to turn their attention to the next fad crime, which could be anything.

 

[Evo]

You're missing the point about this being the fad crime. If you examine the situation with any logic you'll see that the wine drinker is potentially as dangerous, if not more, than the smoker, when they drive home, or do something careless the next day at work cause they're fuzzy from drinking. Depending on how I define "physical discomfort or harm" I could have you banned from any public place where someone with an allergy to deodorant or your air freshener might be or someone allergic to any pet dander you might have on you. Smokers are the easy target nowadays and most people have jumped on the bandwagon. 80 years ago you could smoke cigar after cigar at home, but take a nip of whisky and your wife would club you with a frying pan.

I don't condone drunk driving either and have curtailed my own drinking accordingly. I can't breath if there is smoke around, I have been asthmatic as long as I can remember and an asthma attack can kill you.

Bottom line, I think people should take responsibility for their actions and not do anything that can affect others. I live by this and can't see why others can't.

 

[Jelfish]

Would it be as justified to ban smoking outside if it were not even a possible long-term health risk but simply annoying/allergy-causing? I feel like the crux of the argument for the ban lies in the idea that second-hand smoke is very dangerous. Perhaps I'm somewhat ignorant in this area, but has that been proven to be the case without a shadow of doubt? I was under the impression that the studies were not as conclusive as some would want me to think.

 

[Jelfish]

I don't condone drunk driving either and have curtailed my own drinking accordingly. I can't breath if there is smoke around, I have been asthmatic as long as I can remember and an asthma attack can kill you.

hmm. I didn't consider an asthma attack. I guess that's a good point.

What about this: Say I had this special interpretive dance that I enjoyed doing in my spare time in the local public park. This dance involves me flailing wildly such that if anyone were to walk in the vicinity, they would definitely get hurt. Should this dance be outlawed if it is general knowledge that walking near me would result in trauma?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Of course he would be all alone, I don't know many people who are allergic to cats.

Which would change drastically if studies came out showing that most people are affected adversly to some degree by exposure to cat dander. The Cat-Scratch Fever scare of a few years back had a lot of people with kids getting rid of their cats.

And that is harming my body by?...

Who said it had to directly harm your body to be an unacceptable imposition on you? You don't mind that they're raising your insurance rates?

 

[Moonbear]

Perfume is pretty irritating to my senses. Let's ban that too?

I don't know about anywhere else, but when I lived in NJ, they had made it illegal for those people in department stores to spray you with perfume when you walked in after someone had an asthma attack and later sued when they were sprayed with perfume. Now they have to ask first. All the department stores I've been in since have always asked, but I don't know if that's just corporate policy to avoid lawsuits, or if it's the law. I do find perfume irritating, but the effects don't seem to linger or cling to me the way it does with smoke. I've never been around someone else wearing perfume and walked away feeling like I was still wearing their perfume, but just one quick pass next to someone smoking a cigarette, and I can smell it on all my clothes.

Like LYN, I don't have a lot of sympathy for smokers, so wouldn't fight against the ordinance. It's not as bothersome to me outdoors as indoors, as long as they don't crowd around doorways to buildings I need to enter (I'd be content with a ban of 10 feet from any building entrance...that seems far enough to dissipate the smoke so I don't have to suffer from it as I try to enter), so although I won't fight it, I probably wouldn't have asked to enact such a law either.

 

[Evo]

What about this: Say I had this special interpretive dance that I enjoyed doing in my spare time in the local public park. This dance involves me flailing wildly such that if anyone were to walk in the vicinity, they would definitely get hurt. Should this dance be outlawed if it is general knowledge that walking near me would result in trauma?

Let's consider this. Are you the only one performing this deadly dance with the understanding, beforehand, that anyone observing could be injured? Or are there thousands of people performing this dance in public places, where the general public have no idea they could be, or should be, harmed?

I think I should be able to go out to eat at a restaurant without fearing for my life.

 

[Jelfish]

Like LYN, I don't have a lot of sympathy for smokers, so wouldn't fight against the ordinance. It's not as bothersome to me outdoors as indoors, as long as they don't crowd around doorways to buildings I need to enter (I'd be content with a ban of 10 feet from any building entrance...that seems far enough to dissipate the smoke so I don't have to suffer from it as I try to enter), so although I won't fight it, I probably wouldn't have asked to enact such a law either.

I think that's kind of dangerous. If you feel that this law is not really fair, then I think you should fight it, regardless of whether or not you actually condone the action. I think it's the same as some hot-topics like abortion or gay marriage. It doesn't have to affect you to be able to objectively conclude whether or not the law is fair. And not fighting it is an invitation to establish precidence for other laws that will affect you (this isn't directed specifically to you, Moonbear).