Home Smoking Ban Looms in Belmont

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/11/BAM2SNO3O.DTL&hw=belmont&sn=001&sc=1000
Smoking ban looms for Belmont apartment dwellers
Steve Rubenstein, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, October 11, 2007

SF Chronicle

Belmont apartment dwellers who like to light up in their homes have
14 months to kick the habit, work out a compromise with their
nonsmoking neighbors or get out of town.
Under the city's new smoking ban, among the toughest in the nation,
apartment residents whose secondhand smoke invades their neighbors'
units will be subject to fines of as much as $1,000.
The measure, which the City Council enacted Tuesday on a 3-2 vote,
bans smoking in multiunit dwellings as well as in parks, outdoor
restaurants and other public places. The apartment provision takes
effect around New Year's 2009, while lighting up elsewhere is banned
as soon as the law officially takes effect in about a month.
Hardly a loophole exists for Belmont denizens hooked on the weed. For
example, the new law allows an actor to smoke onstage during the
performance of a play - but only if smoking is an "integral part of
the story."
The city says the tenant smoking ban will be enforced only if
neighbors complain. It's believed to be the first such law in the
country.
City Councilman Bill Dickenson, who voted against the ban, said he
opposes smoking but the ordinance goes too far. Business owners are
"feeling frustrated," he said.
"Do you want legislation that comes into your home and says you can't
do something?" he said. "Do you want legislation that goes that far?"
Belmont restaurateur Loring De Martini, who has owned The Van's
restaurant for 34 years, estimates the ban will reduce his business
about 15 percent. Under the new law, his customers can no longer step
outside and smoke on the landscaped walkway by his front door.
"This is scary," De Martini said. "People are calling Belmont an evil
place. The council is saying they're going to run your business and
your life. We all know cigarette smoke is no good, but I have
feelings for people and their rights, too."
Among those voting "yes" was Mayor Coralin Feierbach, whose father
died of cancer and who pushed hard for the law's passage.
"We're doing something no one else has done," the mayor said. "We're
pioneers, and sometimes when you're a pioneer you get your head
chopped off."
Smokers, she said, have no constitutional right to smoke, but
nonsmokers have a constitutional right not to inhale other people's
smoke.
Serena Chen, policy director for the American Lung Association of
California, hailed the Belmont ordinance as a "turning point in
history."
"Secondhand smoke cannot be vented easily," she said. "It expands
into all available spaces in an apartment building."
Chen recalled similar opposition to bans on smoking in offices and on
airplanes.
"There was a lot of gloom-and-doom talk," she said. "But people are
still working, and people are still flying."
E-mail Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein [at] sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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