Advancing toward prohibition, 25 feet at a time:
On Tuesday, Washington state voters will consider the first statewide ban on smoking within 25 feet of buildings that prohibit smoking….
Limits on smoking outdoors have taken off in the past two years, says Maggie Hopkins of the American Non-smokers’ Rights Foundation.
Among the examples: many beaches in California (see Jun. 24, 2004), and hospital grounds in Iowa: “Patients and visitors will have to trek off hospital grounds — one campus is 44 acres — to smoke.” (Dennis Cauchon, “Smoke-free zones extend outdoors”, USA Today, Nov. 1). See Jul. 27 (smoking while driving); Aug. 15 (prison terms proposed for smoking too close to buildings).
3 Comments
I have a friend, an asmatic, who has trouble even at restraurants and stores who don’t allow smoking.
The reason, smokers go right outside the door to smoke. Right outside. So getting in and out FORCES close exposure to smoke.
These smoking bans, in order to be worrisome, need to be enforced. Otherwise it is as if they don’t exist. I work for a major academic medical center, where people sit outside the hospital door on benches with metal “no smoking” plaques riveted to them. You guessed it- they sit on the benches, smoking…
I personally abhor most laws regulating personal behaviour… but I have little problem with bans such as this, as thy are not PERSONAL behaviour: they affect others. Apply same logic as public decency laws.
Snuffing, as best I can tell, would affect no one else, as would chewing nicotine gum (if you don’t spit it on public property). Even chewing tobacco has a fairly solid case (though less solid than the above). But smoking in public is a very PUBLIC activity, which every nearby citizen partakes of, willing or not. It seems that the proper way to deal with this would be local laws.