[cooljay788]

Smoking Ban Hits Home. Truly.

By Jesse McKinley
January 26, 2009

Belmont, Calif. — During her 50 years of smoking, Edith Frederickson says, she has lit up in restaurants and bars, airplanes and trains, and indoors and out, all as part of a two-pack-a-day habit that she regrets not a bit. But as of two weeks ago, Ms. Frederickson can no longer smoke in the one place she loves the most: her home.

Ms. Frederickson lives in an apartment in Belmont, Calif., a quiet Silicon Valley city that is now home to perhaps the nation’s strictest antismoking law, effectively outlawing lighting up in all apartment buildings.

“I’m absolutely outraged,” said Ms. Frederickson, 72, pulling on a Winston as she sat on a concrete slab outside her single-room apartment. “They’re telling you how to live and what to do, and they’re doing it right here in America.”

And that the ban should have originated in her very building — a sleepy government-subsidized retirement complex called Bonnie Brae Terrace — is even more galling. Indeed, according to city officials, a driving force behind the passage of the law was a group of retirees from the complex who lobbied the city to stop secondhand smoke from drifting into their apartments from the neighbors’ places.

“They took it upon themselves to do something about it,” said Valerie Harnish, the city’s information services manager. “And they did.”

Public health advocates are closely watching to see what happens with Belmont, seeing it as a new front in their national battle against tobacco, one that seeks to place limits on smoking in buildings where tenants share walls, ceilings and — by their logic — air. Not surprisingly, habitually health-conscious California has been ahead of the curve on the issue, with several other cities passing bans on smoking in most units in privately owned apartment buildings, but none has gone as far as Belmont, which prohibits smoking in any apartment that shares a floor or ceiling with another, including condominiums.

“I think Belmont broke through this invisible barrier in the sense that it addressed drifting smoke in housing as a public health issue,” said Serena Chen, the regional director of policy and tobacco programs for the American Lung Association of California. “They simply said that secondhand smoke is no less dangerous when it’s in your bedroom than in your workplace.”

At a local level, the debate over the law has divided the residents of the Bonnie Brae into two camps, with the likes of Ms. Frederickson, a hardy German émigré, on one side, and Ray Goodrich, a slim 84-year-old with a pulmonary disease and a lifelong allergy problem, on the other.



Ray Goodrich helped lead a successful campaign to ban
smoking in many apartment units.



And, as with all combatants, there is a mix of respect and animosity.

“She is one tough old woman,” Mr. Goodrich said.

Ms. Frederickson is less loving.

“I would not acknowledge that man for anything in the world,” she said. “He started this as a vendetta against other residents.”

A soft-spoken North Carolinian who grew up playing in tobacco warehouses as a child, Mr. Goodrich hardly seems the vendetta type, but he did say he noticed smoke drifting in from neighbors’ rooms soon after he moved into Bonnie Brae in 1998.

“It gave me an instant headache, kind of like an iron band around the head,” Mr. Goodrich said. “I could be sitting and have the air filters going, which eliminated the visible smoke, but the smoke was still there.”

He finally decided he had had enough after a fire broke out in a smoker’s room in the complex in 2003, a blaze that was fed by the tenant’s oxygen tank.

“I came around the corner, and there was just a giant puff of black smoke, and I knew I wasn’t going to last five seconds in that,” Mr. Goodrich said. “It was like Dante’s inferno up there.”

Determined to root out smokers, Mr. Goodrich began a letter-writing campaign, petitioning everyone from local officials to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which helps finance the privately managed Bonnie Brae, which serves low- and middle-income seniors.

“We need your help,” read one of Mr. Goodrich’s letters in July 2006. “A barking dog disturbs our sleep but will not kill us. Secondhand smoke is killing us.”

That letter caught the attention of several members of the Belmont City Council, including Dave Warden, a Belmont native and software consultant who served on the council until 2007. Mr. Warden said council members were particularly moved when Mr. Goodrich followed up with repeated visits to council meetings, often joined by other Bonnie Brae tenants — using walkers, wheelchairs and oxygen tanks — and telling harrowing tales of life surrounded by secondhand smoke.

“I think that they didn’t have a grand strategy, I think they just wanted some change, and they didn’t know how to get it,” he said. “And once it got discussed seriously, they got very encouraged.”

But as word spread, council members also started to receive complaints — including threatening e-mail messages — implying that Belmont, about 20 miles south of the liberal climes of San Francisco, had become a “nanny state.” Mr. Goodrich was also feeling the hate, he said, getting “cold stares and dead silence” from smokers at the complex.

“The worst place you can be is between an addict and their fix,” he said. It did not help, he said, that most of the smokers were younger — “they don’t live as long,” he said — and more vocal.

But finally, after more than a year of deliberation, the Council passed the law in October 2007, barring smoking anywhere in the city of about 25,000 except in detached homes and yards, streets and some sidewalks, and designated smoking areas outside.

The law took effect on Jan. 9, after a 14-month grace period that allowed apartment buildings time to comply with the new rules — like rewriting lease agreements to ban smoking — and tenants who objected to the changes to move. The law brings with it the threat of $100 fines, though city officials say no penalties have been levied yet.

Mr. Goodrich says his days in politics are over.

“I’m working on my second retirement,” he said. “The smoking stuff was my last hurrah.”

He says he suspects that some residents still smoke secretly late at night, while others crowd the small outdoor areas where smoking is still allowed.

Ms. Frederickson is one of those, at least for the time being; after all, she says, she is looking to move out of Belmont if she can find something cheap enough.

Until then, however, she seems defiant, despite feeling like a criminal in Belmont.

“And I’m going to keep being a criminal, let me tell you that,” she said.

[bobbyT]

unbelievable, what's next, if someone doesn't like the smell of the cooking oil we use, they can pass legislation to ban us from using that as well....

[CamelMan324]

Originally Posted by cooljay788 Smoking Ban Hits Home. Truly. By Jesse McKinley January 26, 2009 Belmont, Calif. — During her 50 years of smoking, Edith Frederickson says, she has lit up in restaurants and bars, airplanes and trains, and indoors and out, all as part of a two-pack-a-day habit that she regrets not a bit. But as of two weeks ago, Ms. Frederickson can no longer smoke in the one place she loves the most: her home. Ms. Frederickson lives in an apartment in Belmont, Calif., a quiet Silicon Valley city that is now home to perhaps the nation’s strictest antismoking law, effectively outlawing lighting up in all apartment buildings. “I’m absolutely outraged,” said Ms. Frederickson, 72, pulling on a Winston as she sat on a concrete slab outside her single-room apartment. “They’re telling you how to live and what to do, and they’re doing it right here in America.” And that the ban should have originated in her very building — a sleepy government-subsidized retirement complex called Bonnie Brae Terrace — is even more galling. Indeed, according to city officials, a driving force behind the passage of the law was a group of retirees from the complex who lobbied the city to stop secondhand smoke from drifting into their apartments from the neighbors’ places. “They took it upon themselves to do something about it,” said Valerie Harnish, the city’s information services manager. “And they did.” Public health advocates are closely watching to see what happens with Belmont, seeing it as a new front in their national battle against tobacco, one that seeks to place limits on smoking in buildings where tenants share walls, ceilings and — by their logic — air. Not surprisingly, habitually health-conscious California has been ahead of the curve on the issue, with several other cities passing bans on smoking in most units in privately owned apartment buildings, but none has gone as far as Belmont, which prohibits smoking in any apartment that shares a floor or ceiling with another, including condominiums. “I think Belmont broke through this invisible barrier in the sense that it addressed drifting smoke in housing as a public health issue,” said Serena Chen, the regional director of policy and tobacco programs for the American Lung Association of California. “They simply said that secondhand smoke is no less dangerous when it’s in your bedroom than in your workplace.” At a local level, the debate over the law has divided the residents of the Bonnie Brae into two camps, with the likes of Ms. Frederickson, a hardy German émigré, on one side, and Ray Goodrich, a slim 84-year-old with a pulmonary disease and a lifelong allergy problem, on the other. Ray Goodrich helped lead a successful campaign to ban smoking in many apartment units. And, as with all combatants, there is a mix of respect and animosity. “She is one tough old woman,” Mr. Goodrich said. Ms. Frederickson is less loving. “I would not acknowledge that man for anything in the world,” she said. “He started this as a vendetta against other residents.” A soft-spoken North Carolinian who grew up playing in tobacco warehouses as a child, Mr. Goodrich hardly seems the vendetta type, but he did say he noticed smoke drifting in from neighbors’ rooms soon after he moved into Bonnie Brae in 1998. “It gave me an instant headache, kind of like an iron band around the head,” Mr. Goodrich said. “I could be sitting and have the air filters going, which eliminated the visible smoke, but the smoke was still there.” He finally decided he had had enough after a fire broke out in a smoker’s room in the complex in 2003, a blaze that was fed by the tenant’s oxygen tank. “I came around the corner, and there was just a giant puff of black smoke, and I knew I wasn’t going to last five seconds in that,” Mr. Goodrich said. “It was like Dante’s inferno up there.” Determined to root out smokers, Mr. Goodrich began a letter-writing campaign, petitioning everyone from local officials to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which helps finance the privately managed Bonnie Brae, which serves low- and middle-income seniors. “We need your help,” read one of Mr. Goodrich’s letters in July 2006. “A barking dog disturbs our sleep but will not kill us. Secondhand smoke is killing us.” That letter caught the attention of several members of the Belmont City Council, including Dave Warden, a Belmont native and software consultant who served on the council until 2007. Mr. Warden said council members were particularly moved when Mr. Goodrich followed up with repeated visits to council meetings, often joined by other Bonnie Brae tenants — using walkers, wheelchairs and oxygen tanks — and telling harrowing tales of life surrounded by secondhand smoke. “I think that they didn’t have a grand strategy, I think they just wanted some change, and they didn’t know how to get it,” he said. “And once it got discussed seriously, they got very encouraged.” But as word spread, council members also started to receive complaints — including threatening e-mail messages — implying that Belmont, about 20 miles south of the liberal climes of San Francisco, had become a “nanny state.” Mr. Goodrich was also feeling the hate, he said, getting “cold stares and dead silence” from smokers at the complex. “The worst place you can be is between an addict and their fix,” he said. It did not help, he said, that most of the smokers were younger — “they don’t live as long,” he said — and more vocal. But finally, after more than a year of deliberation, the Council passed the law in October 2007, barring smoking anywhere in the city of about 25,000 except in detached homes and yards, streets and some sidewalks, and designated smoking areas outside. The law took effect on Jan. 9, after a 14-month grace period that allowed apartment buildings time to comply with the new rules — like rewriting lease agreements to ban smoking — and tenants who objected to the changes to move. The law brings with it the threat of $100 fines, though city officials say no penalties have been levied yet. Mr. Goodrich says his days in politics are over. “I’m working on my second retirement,” he said. “The smoking stuff was my last hurrah.” He says he suspects that some residents still smoke secretly late at night, while others crowd the small outdoor areas where smoking is still allowed. Ms. Frederickson is one of those, at least for the time being; after all, she says, she is looking to move out of Belmont if she can find something cheap enough. Until then, however, she seems defiant, despite feeling like a criminal in Belmont. “And I’m going to keep being a criminal, let me tell you that,” she said.

Yeah, this is why I hate apartments now, all apartment buildings are now putting in this anti-smoking crap. It's like I'm paying to live here, I should have the right to do whatever I damn well please in here. Right now I currently live in an apartment, that has the "no smoking rule" in the apartments, and to be honest, I break this rule everyday, I always light up right in the building and so far, noone has even said anything to me about it. I haven't got any complaints from neighbors or anything like that. Whenever the land lord plans on stopping by, I just hide all of my ashtrays and spray some of that "Febreeze" spray that makes the apartment smell good and he doesn't suspect a thing when he comes over here, lol.

I can't wait til I get diagnosed with lung cancer, I'm just going to light up in any restaraunt or any place I want, and if they threaten me, I'll just say "Dude, I have lung cancer, I don't have much longer left, I'm going to sit here and smoke this right here whether you want me to or not"

[Smylex]

America is becoming more communist by the second. How can the govt. tell me where to smoke. Pretty soon you won't be able to smoke outside because animals will be 'harmed'. swear this is so outragoues. Like we smokers shouldn't have certain rights!!!

[CamelMan324]

Originally Posted by Smylex America is becoming more communist by the second. How can the govt. tell me where to smoke. Pretty soon you won't be able to smoke outside because animals will be 'harmed'. swear this is so outragoues. Like we smokers shouldn't have certain rights!!!

Yeah, me and my friends have already made an agreement that once we are diagnosed with lung cancer (which probably won't be for awhile), that we are just going to smoke wherever we damn please. Whether its in a restaraunt or a bar, or on a train, we said that we will just light up anywhere where there's a no smoking sign, because it's like we're already going to be dying from cancer, so we may as well enjoy our last puffs in any location that we choose.

[Smylex]

That is a great attitude to have! Seriously, these swine need to stop taking away our civil rights.

[CamelMan324]

Originally Posted by Smylex That is a great attitude to have! Seriously, these swine need to stop taking away our civil rights.

I know, right? This is almost like segregation to me. It's like Jim Crow all over again- except now it's targeting us smokers, next thing u know, they have smokers use separate drinking fountains, and separate bathrooms lol. Or make up some crazy crap like "Anyone who partakes in smoking is denied the right to vote"

We need to do sit-ins like they did back in the civil rights era. Like a big group of smokers should just go inside different bars and all of them should just light up in there and not leave, just sit there and smoke no matter who tells you to stop. Let the cops come and try and break it up, I would love to see them try.

[cooljay788]

I'd actually love the idea of "Smokers Restaurant," "Smokers Taverm," "Smokers Casino," etc.

But unfortunately, antis would tear my idea up (on having smokers businesses and nonsmokers businesses) in a flash.

You're right on smokers getting a darn good taste of Black-like treatment. And it's gonna get worse for smokers.

More smokers need to get up and MARCH in Washington DC just like older generations of my race used to do in the Civil Rights era.

[penwright]

They are putting a no smoking ban on us here in MN. It was just voted on and passed last week. What it all entails is, no smoking in any restaurants or bars, public places, etc. I'm not sure exactly what they mean by public places. What doesn't make any sense to this new law is that we already have bans set for restaurants and bars since about four or five years ago. So this is nothing new. What do they mean they are starting a new ban when it's already in effect?

I agree, and told smoker friends, a long time ago, we need to stand up for our rights. All they kept saying was they knew it wasn't healthy for them to smoke anyway. So they wouldn't do anything to stop these bans. Now they are all complaining when they had the chance to do something back then. This was over ten years ago.

I could see what was coming, but, to be honest, I didn't expect it to go so overboard.

I also have told people to stop throwing their cigarette butts out their car window and on the ground. While I was the on-site resident manager of two complexes, I had to pick these up every day. I even had to clean up after people who emptied their car ashtrays onto the parking lots even though there was a huge garbage bin within a few feet.

I can tell you, I got very tired of it. I still am always telling my husband to use our ashtray in our car, but he keeps throwing his cigarette butts out the window while driving. When are we going to learn that they are extremely unattractive and start respecting our homes and areas?

I really believe this is one of the reasons we are getting hit so hard. As a smoker, it bothers me to see cigarette butts all over the streets. So I can imagine how it must affect non-smokers. Something else, I always leave the area, even in my home, if a non-smoker is present. And I always asked if it was all right if I smoked wherever I was unless it was posted to be ok to do so. It is just polite, and as a 62 year old woman, I learned this is the way to treat people as I like to be treated.

I can't count how many times I was told that they appreciated my considering their feelings about smoking around them, and that a lot of smokers never did.

What did we expect? We could just continue abusing others for our pleasure-that it would never come around and bite us? I know it's about non-smokers saying it's due to health reasons, but isn't it just possible, in the long run, that we brought this on ourselves by not caring how someone else feels?

This is something to be asking ourselves.

[cooljay788]

Originally Posted by Winston100 Terrifying, absolutely ridiculous. I will smoke wherever I damn well please. Let's see what anyone is gonna do about it. I live in an apartment and nobody bugs me about where I smoke. Roof, balcony, indoors. Nobody's business is what it is.

I agree fully with your thinking. Where I smoke is nobody's business. I'll even smoke in a public men's restroom if I have to like on a cold wintry day. I refuse to smoke in the frigid cold! If there weren't smoke cops around, I'd light up wherever I please too!!