Skip to main content
Loading…
This section is included in your selections.

(1) Purpose. The purposes of this chapter are to:

(a) Protect the public health, safety, and general welfare by prohibiting smoking in public places and in the dwelling units and common areas of multifamily residential properties under circumstances where one or more persons will be exposed to secondhand smoke;

(b) Ensure a cleaner and more hygienic environment for the city, its residents, its guests, and its natural resources;

(c) Strike a reasonable balance between the needs of persons who smoke and the needs of nonsmokers, including children, to breathe smoke free air, by recognizing the threat to public health and the environment that smoking causes, and by acknowledging that, when these needs conflict, the need to breathe smoke-free air must prevail; and

(d) Recognize the right of city residents, workers, and visitors to be free from unwelcome secondhand smoke.

(2) Findings. The city council hereby finds, determines, and declares that:

(a) It is estimated that only 15 percent of a cigarette’s smoke is inhaled by the smoker, while 85 percent is released into the air for others to breathe;

(b) Extensive medical and scientific research confirms that tobacco smoke is harmful to smokers and nonsmokers alike, triggering eye, nose, throat, and sinus irritation; hastening lung disease, including emphysema; and causing heart disease and lung cancer;

(c) In 1992, the United States Surgeon General reported that involuntary smoking by inhaling secondhand smoke (also called “environmental tobacco smoke”) can cause lung cancer in healthy nonsmokers and poses a significant public health hazard;

(d) In 2006, the United States Surgeon General concluded that a risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke does not exist, and neither separating smokers from nonsmokers nor installing ventilation systems effectively eliminates secondhand smoke;

(e) The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) has classified secondhand smoke as a Group A carcinogen, the most dangerous class of carcinogen;

(f) The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has concluded that secondhand smoke contains approximately 70 cancer-causing chemicals;

(g) The CDC has concluded that secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year among adult nonsmokers in the United States, and that even brief exposure can damage cells in ways that set the cancer process in motion;

(h) The CDC has found that secondhand smoke causes children to suffer from lower respiratory tract illness, such as bronchitis and pneumonia; exacerbates childhood asthma; and increases the risk of acute chronic middle ear infections in children;

(i) The California Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that secondhand smoke causes coronary heart disease in nonsmokers;

(j) The California Air Resources Board has put secondhand smoke in the same category as the most toxic automotive and industrial air pollutants by categorizing it as a toxic air contaminant for which no safe level of exposure exists;

(k) Secondhand smoke is especially hazardous to particular groups, including those with chronic health problems, the elderly, and children;

(l) Inside buildings, tobacco smoke contributes significantly to indoor air pollution;

(m) The aesthetic impacts and odors of secondhand smoke pose a nuisance and annoyance to nonsmokers when in close proximity to people who are smoking;

(n) Smoking in parks or recreational facilities endangers children and other users by exposing them to secondhand smoke;

(o) Within parks and recreational facilities, discarded cigarette and cigar butts (which do not readily decompose) pose a particularly hazardous risk to small children who sometimes ingest the butt or who handle it while it is still hot;

(p) Discarding a lighted cigarette or cigar butt onto the ground in a city park or recreational facility not only has the potential to cause a fire, but also is a major source of litter and pollution, by washing into storm drains and then ultimately contaminating the ocean;

(q) In outdoor dining areas; outdoor service areas; outdoor gathering and event areas; enclosed common areas of multiunit residential housing complexes; in proximity to entrances/exits, windows, and vents of buildings open to the public, smoking endangers the health of nonsmokers who are in the same area;

(r) Neither the United States Constitution nor the California Constitution gives a person a constitutional right to smoke;

(s) The consumption of controlled substances in certain enclosed and unenclosed areas of the city poses a risk to the health, safety, and welfare of the public, including, but not limited to, in many of the same manners as the consumption of tobacco products. (Ord. 694 § 1, 2018).