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Will the Sky Fall Down If it's not held up by Tobacco Smoke?
Throughout the United States, approximately 425 local governments have enacted smokefree air legislation for outdoor areas, especially recreational facilities like parks, playgrounds, and beaches, as well as school grounds and near buildings. (That is a February 2004 total; for a current count, contact Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, 510 841-3032.) Hundreds of private decision makers have instituted smokefree outdoor policies for sites within their authority, including company grounds, condo pools, sports stadiums, etc.
Lawmakers in Sharon, Massachusetts eliminated smoking at ballfields, parks, and public beaches. New York City legislation mandates smokefree school grounds, playgrounds, and requires parts of restaurant outdoor eating areas to be free from smoking. Davis and Palo Alto, California ban smoking near entrances and at bus stops. Honolulu City Council banned smoking on Hanauma Bay beach, Honolulu Zoo, and the Koko Crater Botanical Garden.
In New Jersey there are more than 70 smokefree outdoor ordinances for parks, pools, beaches, ballfields, and zoos in locations including Belmar, Cape May County, Cedar Grove, Ft. Lee, Hackensack, Hackettstown, Mt. Olive, Ocean City, Princeton Borough and Township, and Vineland. (That's an early-2004 tally; New Jersey GASP tracks local ordinances and provides current totals including on www.njgasp.org in the legislation section.)
Smokefree outdoor policies are in place in various sites. Workplaces, including Schering-Plough, Scott Paper, Calgon, Comsat, and Merck, have smokefree grounds. These organizations decided that, in places where they have authority to set healthful standards, they will not enable nicotine addiction. Many professional and amateur sports facilities are smokefree, including almost all 28 major league baseball stadiums. The Pine Valley Golf Club in New Jersey, ranked as the number one golf course in the world by Golf Magazine, "started posting 'No Smoking' on the board when the weather conditions became so dry that we were afraid of fire," said club manager Charles Raudenbush. Then the club noticed how much cleaner the course was (many cigarette filters are not biodegradable) and that costs for litter removal were reduced. So the policy became permanent. (For more sites, contact New Jersey GASP.)
Some people may question smokefree outdoor laws and policies. Any consideration of smokefree policies must start with the fact that tobacco use and secondhand smoke are the primary public health problem in our nation, killing almost half a million people every year. Most jurisdictions, of course, haven't enacted smokefree air laws for indoors, where the hazards are greater. But legislators and decision makers have many good reasons for mandating smokefree outdoor areas:
Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) can be a health hazard outdoors, especially for a child with asthma or a person with emphysema sitting among smokers in a stadium with 70,000 fans in assigned seats. Certainly secondhand smoke can be offensive outdoors, triggering immediate responses like eye irritation, headache, coughing, and difficulty breathing.
With the proliferation of smokefree indoor air policies and laws, some organizations have also mandated smokefree grounds so people don't have to walk through a cloud of smoke to enter buildings. Also, smoke outdoors can become smoke indoors, entering through entrances, windows, or air-intake vents.
Smoking outdoors poses a fire and burn threat, just as it does indoors. The U.S. Department of the Interior reports that, from 1990 to 1999, almost 44,000 acres of forests were burned because of cigarettes. Smoking creates a burn hazard, especially on beaches, at swimming pools, and in crowded places.
Cigarette butts, packages, and other tobacco-use debris are a source of litter, particularly in outdoor smoking areas or near entrances, and a poison hazard. The Center for Marine Conservation found cigarette butts to be the largest single source of beach trash, in its 1995 study in 33 states. Kids making sandcastles don't need cigarette butts; in fact, poison control centers and emergency rooms report incidents caused by children ingesting cigarette butts. Tobacco debris adds nothing good to nature trails.
Eliminating smoking outdoors helps educate everyone, especially children, about good health by providing more examples of smokefree environments and less smoking by role models. Governments and schools teach that nonsmoking is best but undermine that message if they allow smoking in places where they have authority to eliminate it.
Smokefree outdoor laws and policies are similar to other outdoor standards. Alcohol use is forbidden in many public places outdoors. People are required to clean up after their dogs outdoors.
The tobacco industry may object, and trumpet "freedom of choice". But freedom and choice are peculiar words to describe smoking -- an addiction, almost always begun in childhood, promoted by massive disinformation, that most users want to quit.
Outdoor smokefree policies and laws are in force in many places now. In New Jersey, smokefree outdoor ordinances are passing at the rate of more than one a month. (Municipalities have been challenged on their authority to enact smokefree indoor air ordinances and are taking action where they can.) Like anti-littering laws, seat belt requirements, even smokefree indoor air policies and laws, they were once considered unusual but then increased and became accepted.
The choice that proprietors and legislators make every day is whether to enable addiction and public health nuisance or to encourage health for all. Smokefree outdoor air policies and laws protect public health and preserve the choice of the nonsmoking majority to be free from tobacco's damaging consequences.
Regina Carlson, former Executive Director, New Jersey GASP (Group Against
Smoking Pollution), a nonprofit, educational organization working for
smokefree air for nonsmokers and tobacco-free lives for children - March
2004
updated January 30, 2010
This information is created by the Tobacco Control Policy and Legal Resource Center of New Jersey GASP, which provides expert information, guidance, and technical assistance about policy, legislation, and litigation, especially regarding smokefree air. Major funding for this service is provided by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (NJ DHSS).The information presented on this website is not intended as, nor to be construed, or used, as legal advice, and should not be used to replace the advice of your legal counsel.