Good Idea Defies Smoke Screen

It will take only one more official vote of the Laguna Beach City Council to give the city the strictest no-smoking law in Orange County. Although final passage appears to be a formality in view of the recent 4-1 vote, we urge enactment in Laguna Beach, and the passage of similar no-smoking regulations elsewhere throughout Orange County.

Laguna Beach isn’t the first Orange County community to attempt to control smoking in public places. Westminster prohibits smoking in city-owned buildings and the county has an ordinance, which will be reviewed again this week, that designates smoking and non-smoking areas in county-owned buildings and some other public health facilities in the unincorporated area. What makes Laguna Beach’s ordinance different is that it is the first community in the country to attempt to regulate smoking citywide. More cities should take that approach.

Under Laguna Beach’s proposed regulations, smoking would be banned in public meeting rooms, theaters, auditoriums, service lines, elevators and in restaurants that seat 40 or more people and have no established non-smoking areas. The law also will require all employers to adopt written smoking policies giving employees the right to designate work areas that would be off-limits to smoking. The emphasis of the new ordinance is clear in the section that gives non-smokers precedence in disputes over a no-smoking policy.

We are glad to see cities such as Laguna Beach move decisively and override objections from tobacco interests that attempt to minimize the medical facts and the hazards to non-smokers forced to breathe secondhand smoke.

According to the American Lung Assn., as many as 34 million Americans are sensitive to tobacco smoke and studies have shown that non-smokers are indeed exposed to health hazards because of secondhand smoke.

That makes no-smoking ordinances an issue of public health that all communities should be addressing. The argument from opponents that such regulations are an unnecessary government intrusion into people’s rights is nothing but a smoke screen.