No Smoking Law to End All : Snuff It Out in Public Places, Period, Del Mar Initiative Seeker Says

DEL MAR â€”  A vagabond who calls Del Mar’s Seagrove Park his home doesn’t think he’ll stick around if Richard Roe’s brainstorm becomes reality. “It’s hard enough snagging butts now. That guy must be crazy!â€�

Scott Barnett, a 22-year-old Del Mar councilman, frowned over the prospect of national publicity that may descend on his small city if Roe is successful. The town has an elitist image now, he said. This could brand it downright eccentric.

And what does Roe think about the reaction to his plan to make Del Mar a no-smoking zone?

Roe is happy as a clam. His name and his cause are getting wide exposure. It’s a classic case of not caring what people say about him as long as they spell his name right.

His proposal is simple. He plans to gather about 600 signatures on initiative petitions--enough to force a special election in Del Mar--calling for a ban on smoking in all public places, in all places of employment and on all city property. A mail sampling he undertook last fall indicates that about 60% of the city’s voters will go along with him.

Wags at Del Mar City Hall have dreamed up a scenario in case Roe’s initiative petition makes it into the Del Mar Municipal Code: A corps of distinctively dressed officers, wearing gas masks and carrying water pistols, roaming the city’s streets, enforcing the nation’s (and probably the world’s) first outdoor no-smoking ordinance.

Think about it. No cigarettes while strolling down Camino del Mar. No aromatic pipeful of tobacco while watching a sunset in Seagrove Park. No cigar with your coffee at an outdoor cafe. No joint during a jaunt on the beach. (Of course, the latter is already illegal.)

Mayor Arlene Carsten said she has already gotten a call from an outraged Cardiff woman who screamed, “Who is that fascist? He can’t do that!�

Carsten, a smoker, tends to agree. She suggested that Roe’s proposal sounded unconstitutional and unenforceable. Worse yet, it would cost the city $6,000 to hold a special election, she said.

Roe, however, said he has been advised by an attorney that the measure is constitutional. He’s convinced that Del Mar residents, known for their environmentalist fervor and their inclination for health fads ranging from aerobics to yogurt, would snuff out any violation of the Roe Health Initiative.

The City Council members could save the city the cost of a special election simply by enacting the law themselves, Roe points out.

He hasn’t worked out all the details of his smoking ban yet, Roe admits. Del Mar’s 5,200 residents will be able to smoke in the privacy of their own homes and even in their cars while driving on Del Mar streets, he said. Whether or not it would be a violation to exhale smoke out the automobile window has yet to be adjudicated.

Tourists--and Del Mar attracts better than 2 million visitors a year to its beaches, thoroughbred races and county fair--would also be allowed a puff or two at smoking sites as yet undesignated. Roe said it might be wiser to exempt the entire fairgrounds from the no-smoking dictum. Enforcement might get a bit dicey in a jam-packed grandstand during a rock concert, for instance.

Roe, an ex-smoker, claims he is conducting his one-man campaign to stamp out cigarettes in Del Mar as a humanitarian gesture--concern for those who have yet to kick the nicotine demon. Cigarette smoke is damaging the lungs and sinuses of nonsmokers, too, and should be regulated with the same vigor as are other toxic gases, he believes.

If his crusade in Del Mar succeeds--and no one in town is willing to bet against his chances--Roe plans next to reform neighboring Solana Beach. After that, who knows? The county? The state? The nation?

Councilman Barnett, a nonsmoker, wonders whether Roe’s motives are 100% altruistic or whether the former mayor is not putting up a smoke screen to hide his political ambitions. Barnett remembers a piece of advice that Roe gave Barnett, then 21, during his first ever political campaign for a Del Mar council seat two years ago.

Barnett says Roe advised him: “Kid, get yourself an issue, a single issue. Look what it did for March Fong Eu.�

Secretary of State Eu gained her state office in 1974 through a single-minded campaign to abolish pay toilets in public restrooms. Her successful crusade gave her the name recognition and popularity that polled her 4 million more votes than any other state candidate in succeeding elections.

Could Richard Roe be hitching his political ambitions to a campaign to snuff out butts in tiny Del Mar?

Roe’s politic response: “No comment.�