ANR UPDATE, 25(2), Summer 2006

Calabasas, California, a small Los Angeles suburb, made news when it implemented a 100% indoor and outdoor smokefree law on March 17. The law prohibits smoking in most outdoor public areas where people "can be reasonably expected to congregate" or be exposed to secondhand smoke. The city's website points out that the law does not "ban" smoking, but simply restricts smoking areas to places where nonsmokers are not impacted by smoke.

According to Calabasas Mayor Dennis Washburn, "Secondhand smoke and environmental concerns were at the crux of the Council's decision. The new law doesn't constrain freedom; it provides a higher level of freedom for the majority of residents who do not smoke." Washburn says that complaints are low and compliance has been high; in fact, no citations have been given to date. "The law is working well and our community loves it," he concluded.
Thousands of communities have gone smokefree indoors as a result of local or state smokefree laws. Many of these laws contain "reasonable distance to doorway" provisions to prevent secondhand smoke from entering a smokefree building and provisions for smokefree seating at sporting and entertainment arenas or at outdoor patios, where people cannot easily move away from the smoke.

Fueling interest in outdoor protections is the recent California Air Resources Board classification of secondhand smoke as a toxic air contaminant (TAC). A TAC is "an air pollutant which may cause or contribute to an increase in deaths or in serious illness, or which may pose a present or potential hazard to human health." Also, Stanford University researcher Neil E. Klepeis, Ph.D., has conducted quantitative research on exposure levels in outdoor areas. As the scientific evidence on outdoor smoke exposure grows, more communities will consider the issue.

Should your community go smokefree outdoors too?

This depends largely on the level of awareness in your community and on what it will support. The success of the nonsmokers' rights movement is built on raising awareness about the dangers of secondhand smoke, advocating for protections, and moving at the rate that the community is ready to embrace and support. Using Calabasas as an example, the greatest success in terms of public support and understanding, as well as compliance, comes when communities work from the inside out, starting with smokefree indoor environments where concentrations of deadly secondhand smoke are extremely high and significantly impact employees and patrons, and then moving to protect people outdoors from what we now know is a toxic air contaminant.

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